Five anonymised historical charts were dealt to every player. The Monkey Index returned +0.38% across the same tape.
42 desks completed all five charts.
Summer 2008 caught heavy industrials between a fading commodity boom and a credit crisis that was only weeks from breaking into the open. Even Linde's long-term gas contracts could only keep the shares treading water while the wider market braced for September.
Airbus was tangled in A380 wiring delays while orders for Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner were piling up fast, making a late-summer pullback look like a gift to buyers betting on the commercial jet boom. The years of Dreamliner production headaches were still ahead, and the dip was bought straight back.
Fast-food drive-thrus had thrived through the lockdowns, and by spring 2021 the reopening trade had the market wondering if diners would abandon KFC and Taco Bell for sit-down restaurants. Instead, stimulus cheques and sticky mobile-ordering habits pushed the shares to fresh highs and kept them there.
As the October 2018 rate scare hammered growth stocks, nervous money crowded into regulated utilities like American Electric Power as a safe harbour. By late in the month even the defensive shelter was starting to leak, and the run cooled off.
Summer 2007 had the first tremors of the subprime credit crunch rattling the tape, leaving defensive utilities caught between funding jitters and bets that the Fed was about to cut rates. Still trading under its old FPL Group name, the Florida power company was already building out the wind fleet that would turn a regional grid operator into America's largest renewable energy producer.