Who will be the next president? Intrade investors betting heavy on one candidate

Correlations abound. The Federal Reserve's latest plan to continue buying bonds until the job market recovers has sent stocks, commodities, oil all higher. But what's the longer term outlook for these markets? One way of figuring that out – or thinking about it anyway – is to look at the charts. Many technical analysts love to see breakouts – a security or asset class that breaks above, or below, for that matter, a long standing resistance line. Upside breakouts typically are bullish, downside ones, not so much. But, as investment analyst and RIA Tom Brakke, who publishes a blog called the Research Puzzle and its companion Research Puzzle Pix, points out in a blog post today, sometimes it's not so easy. Tom has an interesting piece on breakouts today that's accompanied by an equally interesting chart of a breakout on the Intrade market -- an exchange that allows investors to bet on the outcome of particular events. In this case, the outcome is President Barack Obama winning reelection in November, which as you can see from the chart above, has seen a substantial breakout in recent days.