Curry's Stock Gets Bump As Primary Opponent Orentlicher Drops His Bid

OBSERVATIONS: Stock for Democrat Candidate for Prosecutor Terry Curry (TCUR) gets a big bounce as formitable candidate former State Rep. David Orenlicher dropped his bid and endorsed then Curry's campaign.  This is a big boost for Curry and avoids a messy primary race. Of course there's still this little problem out there however until there's an offical announcment we'll let Curry backers bask in his new found wealth.






ANALYSIS:

UP: TCUR $140; ETCY $120

DOWN:  TOJO $14

Tom John's Stock Tumbles Again After "Special Audience" With Governor Mitch Daniels

WHAT WE ARE HEARING: Called to the carpet early this morning by Governor Daniels (MDAN), GOP Chairman Tom John obviously has some 'spainin' to do on the train wreck that many are calling the worst succession plan ever devised by man. Obviously the Governor has a vested interest considering the Marion County Prosecutor has investigative authority over state government.  Having a person in the seat who may launch legitimate and bogus investigations against his adminstration could tarnish and otherwise notable governing record in a time when others are looking at the Governor as a possible runningmate or even candidate for the Presidency in 2012.  Of course we would love to be a fly on the wall in that meeting however we can imagine that Tom might need one of these for the next few months.

ANALYSIS: 

UP: MDAN $125

DOWN: TOJO $15

Helen Marchal Stock Reduced to Junk Bonds, Brizzi and John Scramble for Protection From Shareholders

OBESERVATIONS: In what may be the shortest campaign in Marion County political history. Helen Marchal has ended her campaign for Marion County Prosecutor. While this obviously reduces her stock to zero as a candidate she still maintains her position in the Insiders/Staffer Industry as chief of staff.  UPDATE: We have learned that Helen has taken a position as City Prosecutor in the Ballard adminstration which raises her stock to the are minimum to avoid junk bonds status (below $10 a share).

ANALYSIS:

UP:  TCUR $120, ETRY $110

DOWN:  HMRL $12, CBRZ $25, TOJO $25, MDAN $120

Brizzi Stocks On Fire As He Burns Thru Campaign Funds...

OBSERVATIONS: As more information leaks from the East Ohio street, we are following the smoke to it source a very damaging campaign finance report filed by Prosecutor Brizzi.  Expect a steep decine in the CBRZ holdings as insiders frantically dial 911 for a fire that's already out of control. Unfortunately it may be too late for fire trucks of spin doctors to keep this looking like the Marion County political version Enron.


CURRENT ANALYSIS:


UP:  IPOP $110;


DOWN:  CBRZ $30;

Brizzi Issues IPO Helen Marchal As His Pick for GOP Candidate for Prosecutor

OBESRVATION: Well its official Brizzi has declined to seek another term yesterday and while it came as no great surprise we were puzzled on thehow he mad this annoucement via an open letter and facebook and all other meothods that shield him from cross-examination or at the very least follow-up questions. Not quite the Brizzi standard of lights, camera action that so many of us have been accustomed to seeing. 

We did take notice to a new stock entry to the Hoosier political marketplace of ideas in the person of his chief of staff Helen Marchal who has received endorsement of Carl Brizzi and an immediate co-signer in the form of Tom John sound bite to be the GOP candidate for the Prosecutor in 2010.

While this pick is certainly interesting we are wondering how the precinct committeepersons will react to a pre-selected candidate for the top law enforement officer in Indianapolis. 

CURRENT ANALYSIS:

UP:  HMRL $110

DOWN: CBRZ $70, TOJO $60,

Brizzi and John Stocks See Decline As Slating Draws Near

WHAT WE ARE HEARING: We feel that BRZI and TOJO will have a steep decline in the next few days as story after story after story begin to his the airwaves. Apparently They decided to delay Brizzi's announcement until the very last minute to prevent any young turk from seeking the nomination. It still remains to be seen who these two have in mind to slate next month.

CURRENT ANALYSIS: 

DOWN:   CBRZ $80; TOJO $70;


UP:    OGPL $110; ADIN $110

State of City Address Gives Ballard Slight Boost

WHAT WE ARE HEARING: In a nutshell most feel that this speech was one of his better ones and certainly better than this one by a long shot. We decided for the sake of clarity, to not look too far back into 2009 when it comes to the Mayor Ballard - not that we wouldn't see a rollercoaster of a ride.  We just think that the last two years will be just as interesting as the first two years and much easier for us to track in realtime. 

ANALYSIS: 

UP: GBAL $145; 

DOWN:  BWMS $100, MKEN $110

Melina Kennedy Issues Stock As She Plans to Unseat Mayor

WHAT WE ARE HEARING: As the second candidate to launch a campaign to unseat Ballard in 2011, Melina Kennedy (MKEN) . She comes into the race with high name recognition and an endorsement from her former boss Mayor Peterson, former Democrat sage Congressman Andy Jacobs Jr and a few unions.  From our perspective it looks like it will be a battle for the powerbrokers andwe're still not sure who will garner the blue collar, rank and file Democrats. Perhaps that may leave space for yet another candidate. We guess only time will tell.

ANALYSIS: 

UP:  MKEN $120, GBAL $140

DOWN:  $100 BWMS,  $95 ETRY 

Brian Williams Early Stock Issue Creates Interesting Buzz

OBSERVATIONS: While Brian Williams' (BWMS)  initital announcement as a candidate for Mayor was done last August it still is noteworthy as we move forward into 2010.  As the first declared challenger to Mayor Ballard (GBAL), this marks a big difference from the first re-election bid of Mayor Bart Peterson. Is this a sign of possible vulnerability for the incumbent, we think so as another candidate has also made her intentions known. Candidate Williams is a relatively unknown comodity even within his own party however there is boost that a candidate receives as first out of the starting blocks in a high profile race.

ANALYSIS: 

UP:  BWMS $105;

DOWN: GBAL $130

Will you list all the stocks values on a daily basis?

While we have selected the stocks we believe have promise for active trading at any one time and those are the ones we will report on here. If for some reason we report on a listed stock and after a while is becomes inactive for an extended period of time, it retains its last reported price.

If a stock has not had any reports posted you can assume it is trading at the standard opening price of $100 per share.

How are stocks selected?

Good question. First, and most obviously a candidate stock is determined by someone who has officially declared for office coupled with the overall impact of the office on the local political environment. Second, we only allow one type of stock per individual. For instance, if we are monitoring an already elected official's stock and he/she decides to run for another office they will continue to be measured as in the POLITICIAN Industry as opposed to the CANDIDATE Industry.

POLITICIAN Industry: We select elected officals that create chatter based on earned media activities and a visible engagement in the community and/or the political process. Obviously some positions such as mayor or prosecutor by their very nature must be included.

The PUNDIT Industry: This market is comprised of mostly blogs and of course the mainstream media which we will not list however will link to a story as needed. We selected blogs that are primarily political in content and appear to have a fairly high degree of traffic.

POLITICAL INSIDERS/STAFFERS Industry: This industry measures the effectiveness and value of political insiders such as party chairpersons, appointed or staffers of selected office holders.

A stock can drop off our list if there is a long period of inactivity.  If that happens we will find a replacement as no stock has a permanent spot on the blog. If we feel for any reason that the stock is not performing to our selected criteria we will drop it with notice but without warning.

JUNK BOND Status: A stock is marked as junk bond if its value falls below $10 a share.

WHAT'S IPSE?

IPSE is a blog that collects, analyzes and rates the political chatter from the blogosphere, mainstream media (and to a lesser extent talk radio) and translates the results into a political stock market model.  We have four industries: 1) politicians 2) political indisiders 3) pundits 4) candidates. 

Each day we review press releases, postings, responses and reports from selected blogs and news outlets to decide the political stock values of  selected elected officials, candidates, political insiders and even the blogs themselves. 

Each stock starts with an initial value of $100 (yeah we know its not like that in real life but we wanted to keep this simple) and may go up and down based on the news of the day.  Also each industry has a unique and separate rating critera.  We can get into that later.

The next few posts will answer frequestly asked questions.  We do have some ideas of adding a trading component to the blog once we iron out the logistics. In the meantime sit back and enjoy.