Etch A Sketch stock triples after Romney campaign’s comment

Chris Moody
·Political Reporter

If you didn't invest in the Etch A Sketch market this week, you totally missed out.

The stock price for Ohio Art Co., which manufactures the toy, tripled on the day an aide for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said the campaign could hit a "reset button" after the primary season "almost like an Etch A Sketch."

"You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again," Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said on CNN Wednesday when asked if the conservative positions Romney has taken during the primaries would hurt him in the general election.

The comments exploded online, fueled by the narrative that Romney's positions are written not in stone but in polystyrene beads. Bloomberg Businessweek's Matt Townsend was the first to spot the uptick in the company's stock price:

"The thinly traded toymaker more than tripled to $12.50 on one transaction of 500 shares at 10:41 a.m. in New York on the over-the-counter market. It was the biggest intra-day move for the shares since at least 1980, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."

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