Remember when President Donald Trump would call out a company by name, causing its stock price to gyrate madly, whacking a few billions off its market value with just one offhanded tweet?
Good times.
The mostly efficient market has since figured out that there was no there there and investors eventually realized that when Trump attacked companies it was empty saber rattling, safely ignored.
However, that wasn't conventional wisdom a year earlier. Back then, there were threats of trade wars, border taxes and penalties for companies that outsourced jobs. None of that came to pass.
Back then, however, this wasn't understood. To tease out what was happening then, I put together two indexes: one was filled with companies that Trump liked -- we called it the Oligarch Index. An even greater endorsement: the new administration was recruiting current or former senior executives from the favored businesses to become cabinet members or senior advisers.
Our other group was made up of those companies that Trump trashed, disparaged or threatened. We called this group the Drain the Swamp Index.
Looking back on this one year later is revealing. From the November 2016 election until when we looked at it January 2017, the Oligarch Index was thoroughly trouncing the Drain the Swamp Index, 15.8 percent to 3.5 percent. Trump hadn't even been sworn in, yet he was already making his heft felt in the marketplace.
Things change.
When we look at the companies Trump threatened, we discover this surprising fact: Having the U.S. president get angry with you, call you out publicly and make scary sounding threats at you -- well, it turns out to be not so bad. In fact, the results are really good.