Discrepancies with net asset values result from changes in sentiment.
At Barclays, conducting a poll of equity analysts for changes in sentiment was first proposed in 2003 in Australia, where financial regulation is more relaxed.
Because 90 percent of the world's hedge funds are dollar-based, those changes in sentiment can have a depressing effect on the American currency.
Both these changes in sentiment raise awkward questions for the Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PwC and KPMG.HP first.
Working with academics at Columbia University and the University of Notre Dame, Dow Jones compiled a dictionary of about 3,700 words that can signal changes in sentiment.
The old GEC has firmly repositioned itself as a supplier of advanced telecoms equipment and is therefore highly vulnerable to cutbacks in the US and changes in sentiment.
But, when markets are trading at extremely high levels, they are very sensitive to sudden changes in sentiment, and that is what we are now witnessing.
Mr Mueller, the predictor of the Iraq syndrome, notes that apart from a mild rise in isolationism after the Vietnam war and a brief drop after the first Gulf war, changes in sentiment have been fairly modest.
Despite these changes in sentiment, films featuring cross-border espionage like "Agent Vinod" and Salman Khan's "Ek Tha Tiger," which released Wednesday, still face problems with the censors on both sides of the borders.
The numbers in the tracking polls are averages based on polling carried out over a number of days, so it takes a while for changes in sentiment to show up.
