“Markets” Weren’t Rattled Yesterday. It Was Just the Usual Few Morons Overreading the Tea Leaves.


James Pethokoukis summarizes the conventional wisdom about Janet Yellen’s first run-in with the media yesterday:

A “market rattling” press-conference performance from Janet Yellen, and Wall Street is suddenly thick with Ben Bernanke nostalgia. “The more experienced Bernanke knew to avoid clarifying deliberately vague statement language,” wrote JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli in a research note. Feroli was referencing Yellen’s squishy, off-the-cuff remark that interest rate hikes might start earlier rather than later next year, or “about six months” after the end of the central bank’s bond buying program. A “rookie gaffe” is how economist Paul Edelstein of IHS Global Insight put it.

You can find about a million stories like this. But as much as I like to mock the panicky nature of Wall Street traders, I think everyone needs to take a deep breath here. As you can see in the chart above, the S&P 500 lost a whopping 1 percent of its value for a grand total of about 24 hours. By 1 pm today it was right back where it had been for the two days prior to the Fed meeting.

The numbers tell the tale: It’s pretty obvious that Yellen, in fact, had only a tiny, transient effect on the market—exactly the same kind of effect Bernanke used to have whenever analysts trained their Wittgensteinian microscopes on, say, the precise linguistic difference between “extended” and “protracted.” In the end, a few morons lost money by overreacting to Yellen’s comments, and that’s about it. This is not exactly a rare event in global high finance.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate