Five anonymised historical charts were dealt to every player. The Monkey Index returned -0.75% across the same tape.
51 desks completed all five charts.
Spring 2009 was the first green shoots bounce off the financial crisis floor, with traders bidding up heavy machinery on stimulus hopes even while mines and building sites around the world sat idle. By late June the market decided the recovery trade in Caterpillar had run too far ahead of real orders.
As the market climbed out of the 2008 crash, investors favoured insurance brokers like Aon for clipping commissions without holding the toxic balance-sheet risk that had just wrecked the banks. The catch that summer was the real economy, where waves of layoffs meant corporate clients had fewer workers and less property left to insure.
In 2005 the market still priced Eaton as an old-economy maker of truck transmissions and hydraulics riding the mid-decade industrial boom. Its pivot into electrical gear for the grid and data centres was still ahead, driving a +1927.4% run from here.
An unsolicited takeover approach from Mondelez had pushed the chocolate maker to record highs all summer, even though the charitable trust that controls Hershey rarely entertains a sale. When Mondelez finally walked away at the end of August, the takeover premium vanished overnight.
As the early tremors of the 2008 credit crunch rattled Wall Street, funds treated Gilead's dominant HIV franchise as a rare shelter where demand did not care about the banks. The wider market was sliding towards the Bear Stearns collapse, yet this chart barely flinched.