Ooh Gawd, This Hurts!

The Wall Street Journal reported a few minutes ago as follows:

Stocks declined sharply Tuesday, with the Dow losing more than 200 points, as weakness in China sent markets around the world into the red, durable-goods data disappointed and uncertainty increased about Iran and Afghanistan.

Now, I'm not picking on the Journal, and I used to write stuff like this myself, but does anyone really know why the market is down just under 2% as of this moment? (Actually the S&P cracked 2% during the time I wrote this item.)

That's the fundamental problem with writing spot news about the markets. Nobody really knows why markets go up or down. It may actually be more accurate to report that the Dow lost more than 200 points because "traders watched other traders watching other traders watching other traders... sell."

Market reporting is a tough job on a day like this. Thank heavens someone else has to do it. Anyway, excuse me while I curl up in a fetal position under my desk.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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