Dissing stock market coverage on TV

Phil Mushnick of the New York Post writes Sunday about how the business news televisions stations recently used the same reason to explain why the stock market was falling and rising.

Mushnick writes, “On Jan. 27 and 28, a Thursday and Friday, the market was down. And all the stations I bumped into carried the same reason: the sudden upheaval in Egypt. Some of these reports carried footage of rioting and massive demonstrations in the streets of Cairo.

“Hey, such cause-and-effect reasoning made perfect sense to me. I guess.

“On the following Monday and Tuesday — Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 — the situation in Egypt not only had not stabilized, it was far worse, the near future of Egypt an even greater uncertainty, the rioting and demonstrations intensifying.

“And on both days, the market went up. It went up 68 points on Monday and an eye-popping 148 points on Tuesday.

“In fact, with Egypt in total chaos, on that Tuesday the Dow closed over 12,000 for the first time in 2 1/2 years.

“Yet, three business days earlier, the nation’s TV audiences were told, in no uncertain terms, that the market was down for a second straight day because of what was going on in Egypt. Very confusing.”