Via Tyler Cowen, here’s a chart from Sober Look that tracks the price of a basket of defense stocks—the iShares defense industry ETF—since the beginning of the year. The index underperformed the market for a bit during February, but it’s fully caught up since then. “Just like the public at large,” says SL, “investors now believe the sequester law will be reversed in short order. US aerospace and defense shares have rallied to outperform the S&P500.”
This is a bit mysterious though. It’s obviously true that investors are sanguine, but I’m sure not seeing any reason for it, at least not in the short term. The defense cuts might be reversed during the next budget cycle, but there seems little chance of the sequester being renegotiated for FY2013. Is this all that investors care about? Or am I missing something?
