Do Supreme Court Decisions Move Markets?

Stock traders might want to start paying a bit more attention to the Supreme Court.

That's according to one research report published this week that says Supreme Court decisions moved the market value of publicly traded companies by a net $140 billion between 1999 and 2014.

But unlike economic data or other typical market-moving news, there is often an hours-long time lag in trading around Supreme Court decisions. The implication, according to the report, is that there might be arbitrage opportunities for savvy traders willing to sift through complex legal rulings.

"This is not a market that's particularly well understood, so it's taking a lot longer for traders to sort it out," said Daniel Katz, an associate professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, who was a lead author on the report, which was produced by a four-person team including another law professor and a legal analytics consultant.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/08/26/do-supreme-court-decisions-move-markets/?mod=WSJBlog