As someone who watches the U. S. Supreme Court as part of my job, I've often wondered if one could make a profit in the stock market by predicting the outcome of cases affecting large, publicly traded companies. Probably not. This graphic is the intraday chart of Wyeth, which lost a biggie yesterday. There is a spike with the downside being about opinion announcement time, 10:00 a.m. However, it is only a fractional point move on a $40 stock, and the intraday chart of the S&P500 shows a drop at the same time. Indeed, the whole intraday pattern of Wyeth pretty much follows the broad market.

One might be able to show a profit predicting the outcome of a "bet the company" case, but there are not many of those.