Wall Street traders have another word for being “early” on a stock. That word is wrong.

So it goes in politics. The chatter at City Hall about Mayor Adams running for president in 2024 is all wrong because it’s coming far too early.

He’s been mayor for less than five months and hasn’t accomplished nearly enough to justify such fanciful scheming. 

His No. 1 job is to make the city safe again, a fact Adams consistently acknowledges. It’s what he campaigned on and it’s why he was elected. 

As he said himself the other day, “I want that obligation. I thank God I’m the mayor right now and not those that don’t understand the urgency of this moment.”

The sentiment is welcome, but he has a long way to go, with Sunday morning’s unprovoked subway murder upping the anxiety level. NYPD statistics certify the public’s impression of rising danger with hard numbers.

Through last Sunday, combined reports of the seven major felonies show an increase of 39% over last year. Thankfully, murder is down 10%, but rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny and car theft are rising by anywhere from 14% to 55%.

Take any of those stats and multiply it by 10 and you get the fear factor. As the mayhem grows, even those who aren’t victims begin to feel it’s inevitable they will be. 

These are unsustainable trends if the city is to ever recover from the pandemic and keep even more New Yorkers from running for the exits. At this rate, the economy will not fully rebound and Adams could find himself failing in the job he’s got.

WH chatter

He is not, of course, the first Gotham mayor to dream of living in the White House. John Lindsay had the urge, as did Adams’ three most recent predecessors — Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio. 

Each ran and got exactly nowhere. Hint, hint.

Adams’ grandiosity first emerged after his victory, when he vowed to be the new face of the Democratic Party and to show America how to run a city. 

Those are great goals and I applaud them. If he achieves them, he could be a legitimate contender for the presidency in 2024 or after. 

As Post reporter Jon Levine wrote in his scoop about White House chatter, a Republican lawmaker said he put it this way to Adams: “I said you really have to consider that you are young enough where you will have a life after the mayoralty and if you solve the crime problem there would be a lot of interest in a big city Democrat, African American with progressive values but who mediated the crime problem in a major city.”

The key words in that sentence are “if you solve the crime problem.”

Truth be told, I’m not even sure that would be rewarded in today’s national Democratic Party. Murder rates started surging during 2020 and haven’t stopped, yet most of the leadership seems coldly indifferent. 

Crime is ravaging Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and nearly every city, but leftist mayors are making more excuses than progress. Ditto for Dem lawmakers, whether they are in Sacramento or Congress. 

When is the last time you heard Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer demand that police crack down on criminals? President Biden is actually set to sign an executive order Wednesday demanding more police accountability, but says hardly a word about the nation’s crime wave on his watch.

Too many left-leaning prosecutors also are members of the “turn-’em-loose” crowd. This trend goes all the way to the top, with Attorney General Merrick Garland more threatened by angry parents at school board meetings than he is killers on the streets of America.

New Yorkers know all this personally because Albany Dems helped create the bloody mess Adams inherited. Their so-called “reforms” on bail laws and age-related prosecutions are turning courthouse doors into turnstiles. Many criminal suspects are back on the streets before cops finish the arrest paperwork. 

It is a miracle that police continue to jeopardize their lives and careers by trying to make arrests when so much of the political establishment sees them as the problem instead of the solution.

He needs help

Again, none of this is Adams’ fault — but it is up to him to solve it. So far, he’s had very little success in getting Albany Dems, including Gov. Hochul, to help him and there’s no sign that this year’s election is making them any more willing to budge. Their re-elections are secure regardless.

That’s the ultimate hurdle Adams faces — most of his party’s voters, especially younger ones, don’t put a premium on public safety or support for cops, and so candidates don’t either. Indeed, he narrowly won the mayoral primary against a field that was more likely to defund the NYPD than embrace it.

The result is that Adams is going to have to build his own anti-crime bandwagon if there is going to be one. That means taking a hands-on approach to the NYPD, in the way that Giuliani did in the beginning of his term. 

The aim is not to micromanage the department, but the mayor needs to know he is getting everything out of the law enforcement forces he has. If he doesn’t have enough cops to do the job, he should commit to hiring more. 

However he does it, Adams must start making major headway in the war against crime and drive the numbers down, down, down. If he can pull that off and the public feels safer, he won’t have to talk about running for president. Others will do it for him.

‘Collude’ awakening

Reader David Rabinovitz calls Hillary Clinton “diabolically ambitious” for a lifetime of lies and her false accusations that Donald Trump colluded with Russia. He writes: “I’m waiting for Woodward and Bernstein to investigate the mess special counsel John Durham is uncovering and say it’s worse than Watergate.

“But if they did that, how would they ever again get to appear on the Rachel Maddow show?”

Joe’s fuelishness

Joe Eck offers a way for Joe Biden to personally experience the “incredible transition” away from fossil fuels the president touted in Japan. 

Eck writes: “The next time the Secret Service fills up the presidential limo with gas, they should just use Joe’s credit card.”

Hill ‘cheat’ sheet

Count Jim Rowbotham among those hoping for a Hillary biography that explores her “character problem.” He adds: “Being humiliated by Bill Clinton’s unrepentant adultery has driven her clawing ambition for the Presidency. It’s her way of justifying why she has stayed unhappily married to Slick Willie.”