It's been a bit of a fad among the IR crew to schedule a client to
ring the opening or closing bells at the New York Stock Exchange.
Everyone from the president of Spain to Michael Jordan has done it and
the NYSE is booked nearly solid through May 2002. But it turns out that
upon a closer look, this ding-a-ling of a craze may be ringing in a new
form of market indicator.
When SpongeBob Square Pants - yes, the cartoon character of Nickelodeon
fame - rang the bell on November 23, the day closed 6.26 points up from
the previous close. But a few days earlier, when Victoria's Secret
supermodel Tyra Banks rang to end the session, the market closed up a
scant .31 points.
This leads PRWeek to hypothesize that the famed Greenspan indicator, in
which market performance was predicted by the bulge in the Fed
chairman's briefcase, will be replaced by: the bottom indicator. The
bigger the bottom - as in SpongeBob's deliciously square derriere - the
larger the market rise. But the tinier the tush - sorry, Tyra - the
closer the market will go, well, south.
Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "the market hit bottom," doesn't
it?
