Trade the Congressional Effect: How To Profit from Congress's Impact on the Stock Market

Where You Can Find Information

In general, there are three major areas of research or data available to the analyst researching what will happen next on Capitol Hill. Many of these sources are simply the ones you would turn to daily for general news about politics and can be loosely defined as what any political junkie would have either on the left or on the right as their daily diet of Washington drama. This chapter categorizes sources that are not traditional “investment” sources such as investment blogs, newsletter, and investment research. Rather, it is aimed at the political media, with some overlap for the larger Wall Street media.

Traditional Print and Mainstream Televison Sources

For someone with simply a passing interest in politics, the major news outlets at least cover some of the issues of the day, even if not in-depth. TV obviously tends to cover more issues with just sound bites and personality as compared to print, and there has been a lot of crossover between the media as more reporters have appeared on the major networks news shows. Even though the TV coverage is not in-depth, it is important for obvious reasons: more people get their news from TV than from other sources. In spite of the importance of politics in their lives, almost half of the public is completely unengaged in politics. It is likely that in the 2012 election less than 60 percent of the eligible voters will actually vote, and of those voting, at least 20 percent will decide in the last two weeks ...