Penn National Gaming (NASDAQ: PENN - option chain) shares are rising today after voters in Ohio approved ballot measures to allow casinos in four cities in the state. PENN lobbied heavily in favor of the measure and will build two of the casinos, in Toledo and Columbus, which are scheduled to open in 2012. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on PENN.

PENN opened this morning at $27.49. So far today the stock has hit a low of $27.49 and a high of $28.88. As of 11:40, PENN is trading at $28.32 up $2.12 (8.1%). The chart for PENN looks bearish and S&P does not currently have a STARS rating for PENN.

I have long been a big believer in the idea that the daily fluctuations in the stock market can't be easily explained.

That doesn't stop people from making sage sounding comments about how the market fell 486 points today due to bad economic statistics -- like the ones we had today on contraction in service sector employment. But by that same logic, the market should have tumbled yesterday as well, thanks to bad retail sales, employment and auto sales numbers on which I posted -- and yet the Dow rose 306 points yesterday.

This got me to thinking about a possible explanation. There's nothing so fun as a good conspiracy theory. What if the Treasury was using its money to help prop up the market in the days preceding the election? My mind then leapt to a possible rationale: Perhaps it reasoned that since the collapse in the markets had helped Obama, a rise in stock prices would work to the advantage of McCain. Aha! It would certainly have looked better for the current administration if it could have been succeeded by another Republican in the Oval Office. If that was the intent, it didn't work too well.

Of course, just as there is no evidence that economic statistics -- or the election -- have anything to do with the market moving one way or the other, so it is difficult for me to find any evidence that the Treasury was funneling cash into the markets to prop it up. Oh well.

In all seriousness, I believe there is a fundamental lack of transparency if there is no credible basis on which to explain why the market moves every day. If the big buyers and sellers of stocks publicly disclosed their moves, then it might be feasible to explain them.

That does not seem to be on the horizon, though. So people will continue making their illogical explanations for those daily price swings.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

The clock is ticking and the pollsters are bouncing around faster than ever with varying results. My latest wager was not on a stock, but a box of 24 doughnuts with a friend who thinks McCain will win the election.

Given the post-Palin slide of the McCain campaign we have been hearing about for the past six weeks, I thought this was a sure thing. Then we learn -- not so fast folks! -- things can change.

Presidential Race Tightens, AP Poll Says Wow, I'll say, they can change. Is this a case of "better the devil we know than the angel we don't"? Although many voters have a throw the bums out mentality, putting Republicans out of favor for the moment, in times of crises perhaps people are rethinking whether they would not prefer the familiar to the enchanting.

This seems to be the election of the enchanted so far. Barack Obama and John McCain were underdogs at the beginning of the presidential primaries but have withstood their critics harshest blows and came out on top.

Earlier this month I posted that John McCain may have made a mistake in selecting Sarah Palin. Now it turns out that the National Review agrees with me.

Katherine Parker argues that while Palin has a pleasant personality, she is "out of her league." Parker believes that her interviews with Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, and Sean Hannity reveal a candidate who probably could not handle the job of president if she were required to take it.

Or as Parker wrote, "it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn't know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion."

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

I was motivated to write this by a recent blog post by Jonathan Berr entitled, Iowa to Wall Street: Drop dead. In that post Jonathan made one assertion to which I take exception. Mr. Berr claims that the American voter is scared and that our fear shall rule the ballot box this coming November. With all due respect (and much is due) to Jonathan Berr, I must make this one assertion, it's not fear that we shall carry to the ballot box in November, it's anger. We as a public are very angry and we have every right to be mad as hell.

We're mad because we know that as major banks were writing off losses they brought upon themselves, they sold those debt portfolios to collection agencies and pools of lawyers who relentlessly chased those dollars until the cows came home. Yeah, it's a loss on the books but those debts are still real and collectible. Do they honestly think we don't know that?

We're angry because our government is silently allowing the sale of large stakes in major domestic financial institutions to foreign entities.

We're upset that our government is underwriting the foolishness of producing ethanol from foodstuffs for use in internal combustion engines when good sense tells us that ethanol should be made from waste and used at it's source for electrical generation.

We're mad as hell that we're potentially facing a government made up mainly of turncoat Democrats who sanctioned a war with their votes and now haughtily claim they were misled. They're liars or they're stupid... which is it?

The Wall Street Journal's "Ahead of the Tape" column looks at (subscription required) one of the age-old market-timing indicators: the election year.

Conventional wisdom holds that election years are a good time to buy stocks because incumbents hoping to hold on to power, for themselves or their party's successor, will try to win voters' favor with fun things like tax cuts and spending to give the economy an upward jolt.

Conversely, politicians usually save things like tax hikes for their first two years in office, hoping we'll forget about it by the time election year rolls around.

The Journal argues that the subprime meltdown and general housing turmoil could make the election indicator less reliable this year. "Investors should also keep in mind the one time in the last half century the presidential cycle didn't work: 2000, when the dot-com stock bubble imploded. No amount of fiscal stimulus could stave off that bear market. It remains to be seen if Washington's pump-priming machine will work this time around."

Markets are too complex to use any one indicator -- no matter how impressive its past performance -- to try to jump in and out of the market. It's been said many times before, but most investors should just buy and hold and pay no attention to the election year indicator, the Super Bowl indicator, or anything else.

I seriously enjoy reading Ina Steiner. She's the editor of AuctionBytes.com. I like her stuff because she's just so damn objective. She simply lays out the facts and lets you come to your own conclusions. I also like Ina because she continuously holds a very bright light directly at eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY).

Recently, Ina opened the floor at the AuctionBytes blog for discussion about the involvement of Meg Whitman in the Mitt Romney campaign. Needless to say, the situation has raised some eyebrows. Personally, I don't care what direction either Meg or Mitt choose to go. Ina's readers, however, had a very dim view of the situation. My question is, has Meg's insurgence into the political realm affected the shareholders of eBay?

Forget for a moment all the ill conceived plans that eBay has tripped over. Ignore the Skype debacle, the eBay China crash, the silencing of Stubhub and the host of other demons that in my opinion the Whitman crew has set loose, buried or denied. Forget for a moment about all that cash flowing into eBay coffers with nothing better accomplished than to outsource customer service and to pay Whitman's salary. Ignore the wolf at the door in the form of Amazon Inc.(NASDAQ: AMZN). Never mind that eBay has lost its shine and reputation and is yet to pay a dividend to its shareholders. I'm talking about presidential politics and corporate wrangling here.

What does the coming year hold for the economy? BloggingStocks' Peter Cohan considers five issues that will factor heavily in 2008.

2008 is an election year in the U.S., which means that nothing significant is likely to change in terms of government policy. The one wild card in that assessment is whether the Bush administration will go to war in Iran – or take some other radical policy move -- since it knows it has very little time left.

Assuming nothing significant changes, the biggest economic story of 2008 is likely to be the repercussions from the deepened collapse of the housing market and all the credit markets that plunge in its wake. There are no firewalls in place to keep the drop in CDO, MBS, and SIV values from spreading to the entire global financial system.

The question is whether the U.S. policymakers will be able to do anything effective to stop the damage.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

Over the weekend there was a referendum in Venezuela that would have scrapped constitutional the term limits for president Hugo Chavez. He has been president of Venezuela since 1998 and constitutional term limits will not allow him to run again in for reelection in 2012. The left- leaning Chavez has been following in the steps of Fidel Castro and turning Venezuela into a communist state. He has enacted emergency powers, nationalized oil infrastructure, expelled foreign missionaries and allowed crime to run rampant. In order for him to constitutionally stay in office though he needed to get rid of the presidential term limits. That referendum this weekend failed, which is good news for democracy.

Venezuela is the forth largest oil exporter to America after Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. About one half of its 2.3 million exported barrels a day come to the US representing about 9% of all US oil imports. Like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Chavez likes to talk and can move oil prices higher with off handed remarks and his railing against US foreign policies.

The Venezuelan people led by Chavez have headed down the road to socialism and almost a Cuban style dictatorship. While by no means the end of the story, this referendum is a win for democracy and should help the long term stability in the region which is important for US oil prices. Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) and ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) have both been had investments in the country in past years.

Kevin Kersten is an Options Analyst with InvestorsObserver.com. Disclosure note: Mr. Kersten owns and or controls a diversified portfolio of long and short positions that may include holdings in companies he writes about.

Remember in 2004 when Sean Combs Puff Daddy P-Diddy Diddy helped champion the "Vote or Die" campaign? Yeah, me neither. But for decades, attempts to get the younger generation to the polls have been critical parts of our major elections. I still remember watching Bill Clinton on MTV in the summer of 1992, lamenting the fact that I was only 18 and unable to vote.

A new President will be elected in about 50 weeks, and Walt Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC Networks is planning on using new media to help educate the social-networking crowd about candidates and news along the campaign trail. The network has inked a deal with Facebook -- in which Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) owns a small stake -- to provide news reports and video for the nearly 60 million members of the website. Facebook members will also be able to participate in polls and debates.

ABC and Facebook have announced plans to jointly sponsor Democratic and Republican Presidential debates in New Hampshire on January 5, three days ahead of the critical primary election in the Granite State. Dan Rose, VP of business development for Facebook, told The New York Times that "Through this partnership, we want to extend the dialogue both before and after the debate."

The agreement was not of a financial nature. ABC News will have exposure on an increasingly popular site; Facebook gets free, fresh content for its political section.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

If the flow of political fund raising capital can be used as a gauge, then there's a strong message coming from the flow of campaign contributions from venture capitalists. Contributions by venture capitalists to Democratic candidates exceed contributions to Republicans by a nearly two to one margin. Red Herring reports, of the contributions from individuals and political action committees connected to the venture capital industry, Democrats have gathered $2.4 million compared with $1.4 million given to Republicans. That's quite a difference and it reveals a little about the current mindset of the finance industry in light of the coming elections.

National Venture Capital Association, is top contributor with $365,500 split 54% Democrat to 46% Republican. This seems to be a reasonable split. The giving picture from the number two and three contributors is much different however. The second largest VC contributor is Kleiner Perkins who piled 94% of $147,400 onto Democratic candidates. Third on the big donor list is Hummer Winblad which gave 100% of it's political contributions to the Democrats. The article from Red Herring expands on the list.

Most interesting to me is the fact that presidential candidate Barack Obama has handily out paced Hillary Clinton in total contributions from the VC camp. Top recipient, Obama has had $349,074 donated to his name while Clinton has only received $235,000 from similar sources. It's also important to note that Obama's total topped the VC's donations of $289,350 to Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Rudi Giuliani wraps up the top four with total contributions received of $178,400.

What do these funding dynamics indicate to you? Is there a fundamental shift taking place or are venture capitalists just hedging their bets? Do these patterns of political contribution reflect intent or are they simply a reaction to an overwhelming sense that something big must change? If political donations by venture capital organizations are an electoral thermometer, I must say it's getting mighty warm in here.

The official election is more than a year away; but the Democratic party is trouncing the Republics in the CEO money primary. According to Bloomberg News, some of George W. Bush's top 2004 fund-raisers, are now helping Democrats running for president.

Among the 60 executives writing checks to Democrats such as Senators Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois are these formerly pro-Bush CEOs:

• Morgan Stanley's (NYSE: MS) CEO John Mack, a Bush Ranger, held a fund-raiser for Clinton in July. He wrote to his executives "I personally believe that [the best] person [running for president in 2008] is Hillary Clinton."
• Yahoo Inc.'s (NASDAQ: YHOO) former CEO Terry Semel gave $2,000 to Bush in 2004 and $50,000 to the Republican National Committee. Semel has given the maximum, $4,600, to Clinton and $2,300 to Obama.
• News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) CEO Rupert Murdoch, who donated $25,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2004, has given Clinton $2,300.

Diebold Inc (NYSE: DBD) said yesterday that it had failed to sell its voting technology unit, Diebold Election Systems, whose products are currently being used in elections across the country. Instead, the company will allow the unit to operate independently, giving the unit a separate board of directors and possibly even a new management structure.

It's no wonder nobody wants want to touch Diebold Election Systems. Last year, Princeton researchers made a demonstration video on how simple it is to corrupt a Diebold voting machine. The report even highlighted a flaw in Diebold machines that allow a virus to jump from machine to machine, infecting one memory card and using it to spread the virus through other machines.

Diebold's decision to distance itself from its own Elections unit was made in part because of "the rapidly evolving political uncertainties and controversies surrounding state and jurisdiction purchases of electronic voting systems." In other words, Diebold "rapidly" discovered that the public lacked any trust in its product, and it was ruining its reputation. Note the new elections unit will operate under a new name, Premier Election Solutions, and lacks one important word within its title: Diebold.

There's something about Barack Obama that Wall Street likes. He raised more money in the most recent quarter than candidates in either party and according to the New York Times DealBook, "Wall Street money had something to do with it." Obama raised money from investment bankers and hedge fund managers and the President of Lehman Brothers.

For whatever reason, Senator Clinton has been less successful in raising money from Wall Street-types. But still this raises an interesting question: Why is a Democrat like Obama cashing in on Wall Street instead of Bain Capital founder Mitt Romney?

Here's one explanation: According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, private equity firms are giving more to Republicans, "a shift from past fund-raising patterns as Democrats view the industry as a source of new taxes." And Romney is leading all candidates with fund raising among private equity firms.

My explanation: Private equity firms and traditional investment firms like Goldman Sachs are competing, and favorable tax treatment for private equity puts other firms at a competitive disadvantage. How can you compete when you're paying twice as much in taxes?

Tuesday's Brad Blog brought my attention to the famed Princeton Diebold (NYSE: DBD) Virus Hack, last summer's break-in of Princeton University's Diebold touch-screen voting system. Princeton's study found that to steal an election, all someone had to do was gain access to the system and slip a vote-swapping virus onto a single machine, which then had the potential to affect every other machine in the country and -- Ta da! Election stolen, game over.

After discovering the hack, Diebold, which specializes in technology that people use to access their services whenever and wherever they may choose, posted a picture of "the key" on their Web site -- the same key that opens every single voting touch-screen machine in the system. Of course, J. Alex Halderman, one of the people involved in the Princeton Hack, had a friend who discovered the Web page and realized that he could very easily and cheaply make a working copy of that same key right from the photo. Voting security? Not so much.

While Diebold eventually removed the photo of the key from its Web site, it remains to be seen how many saw it and had the same thoughts as Mr. Halderman's friend and how many other voting machines, file cabinets and office supplies are at risk.

Even more frightening, it was announced that Diebold "recently earned certification from the General Services Administration to deliver security integration services that meet the requirements of the Homeland Security Presidential Directive." In addition, Diebold was hired to secure the founding documents of America: the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Maybe it's just me, but the Virus Hack debacle highlights holes not only in Diebold's machines' securities, but Diebold itself. I for one, wouldn't want them working on matters of national security -- if their machines are so easily hacked into, what would that say about our country? I'd like to think that at the very least, our country's security leaders learned a few things from this incident, but I'm going to have to assume that they didn't.