It’s ironic that Wall Street kicked off what billionaire elites are calling a “hot commie summer” — their label for the socialist jolt delivered by Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York — with the biggest equity slump in a month, and no obvious trigger to explain it. Suddenly, the S&P 500 was down 1.2 percent, tech megacaps lost 2.3 percent, and the retail favourites index posted its worst drop since April.

A coincidence, clearly, what we call “confluence” in market lingo. There is no evidence that the new mayor-elect of the finance capital of the world, a self-described socialist, triggered any of this. But the timing of the collapse makes it so interesting.

Not the least since the city’s richest and loudest had gone all-in to block Mamdani from becoming mayor, pouring in PAC money, podcasts, prime-time interviews, social media crusades and dinner-party warnings. That the effort failed so spectacularly, and in the same week markets cracked without warning, has amplified a sense of political and market vulnerability that Wall Street is now scrambling to hedge.

Of course, this is not to suggest that financial markets are responding directly to municipal politics. The institutions that price risk are not going to dump tech because a socialist got elected in one borough of New York. But that does not mean sentiment operates in a vacuum.

Even the idea that populist politics can penetrate the deepest layer of the financial class’s own fortress city........

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