STOCK MARKET A GUH DOWN SINCE CHUMPUP POLL NUMBERS UP

Since Donald Trump’s poll numbers have improved, the stock market has shown its disapproval: Money has been flowing out of stocks, volatility is picking up and fear has been spreading among traders that a Trump presidency would be bad for the economy and awful for the markets.

And, as usual, Wall Street has it mostly wrong.

Not necessarily the part that Trump might win on Tuesday, of course. That’s a real possibility, even if his path to victory is still narrow, where he’d have to flip at least one Democrat-leaning state while keeping all of the regular GOP ones, and sweep toss-ups like Florida and Ohio.

No, where Wall Street traders and investors are losing it is in the notion that stocks need to go down in value to compensate for a neophyte politician with a volatile temper like Trump being in the Oval Office, while his staid and experienced (and possibly criminal) Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton is sent home presumably to give more paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and run her controversial charity.

Indeed, for months now, the market has been fluctuating along with Trump’s poll numbers.

In July, as FBI Director James Comey made a public address on the investigation into Clinton’s mishandling of classified information, stocks tumbled — until he finally announced there would be no recommendation of charges to the Justice Department and the market pared its losses.

Then, during the first presidential debate, which Clinton seemed to be winning easily, another key indicator — the strength of the Mexican peso — began to rise. The bet there among traders was that the public wouldn’t elect someone as unprepared as Trump, thus he would never be able to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Mexican economy wouldn’t suffer.

More recently, as Trump has closed the gap with Clinton, the stock market has been down for nine straight sessions. That began when ObamaCare premium hikes were announced, a spate of bad news for the candidate defending the bill: Clinton.

Trump got a big boost two Fridays ago, when Comey informed Congress he was reopening his case into Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server.

Since nearly the moment Comey made the announcement, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 357 points, or nearly 2 percent of its value, through Friday. The closely watched “fear index,” known as the VIX, has increased 38 percent over the past seven days — meaning people are more worried about losing money in the stock market.

The peso has fallen too over that period, which means a few more traders think Trump might win, “build that wall” and possibly repeal NAFTA.

All of which is lunacy.

As crazy as Trump’s demeanor has been at times during the campaign — I’ll admit it’s more than a bit odd that the possible leader of the free world gets into late-night Twitter feuds — there’s nothing nutty about what he has proposed on taxes or regulation, at least from the market’s perspective. If history is any guide (see the Reagan years, and the last six years of President Bill Clinton) lower taxes on individuals and corporations, as Trump is proposing, are usually a good thing for stocks, as are fewer regulatory burdens for business.

As for his anti-free trade policies, they would be bad if Trump could follow through on them. But that’s unlikely. If elected he’d have to deal with a GOP Congress and some Democrats still committed to the idea that free markets are a net benefit to the economy.

And yet Wall Street is worried that in a Trump presidency they’re losing out at the second coming of the other Clinton — Bill, who, while in office and particularly with a Republican Congress, cut taxes and regulations and the markets soared.

But that ignores what Hillary Clinton actually wants to do, from her deficit-inflating spending proposals to the myriad taxes and regulations — all of which should cause the market to recoil.

It all makes more sense, though, when you remember that markets are pretty dumb in the short term. In fact, a positive poll number for Hillary just before Tuesday’s vote will probably send stocks soaring, with traders snapping up shares in a relief rally that a near-criminal is better for the markets than a crazy man.

Based on what a second President Clinton says she wants to do with the economy, that’s ludicrous.

Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.