The 315% Indicator

Article Excerpt

partly because so many commentators are talking about the risk of a 1930s-style depression. That kind of talk is common in any deep stock market setback. But this time it’s closer to home, due to plunging house prices and the troubles of the auto industry. To top it off, President Obama has taken to warning that we risk a new depression if Congress failed to pass his stimulus package and other pet projects. But statistics to date are closer to the 1980s recession (and its savings-and-loan crisis) than the 1930s. That’s why the inevitable recovery from this downturn could be much sharper than most dare hope, as in Nova’s case. NOVA CHEMICALS CORP. $5.63 (New York symbol NCX) jumped 315% in one day in February after it accepted a takeover offer, and this tells us something about the market. Gains like this are extraordinarily rare. They only happen when there’s a wide disparity between investor fears and reality. Investors feared, wrongly, that Nova was headed…