Reporters and their editors have been getting whipped around by the stock market, since the market drives the news, not the other way around. That’s why we were battered senseless with ridiculously optimistic headlines about the increasing likelihood of a v-shaped economic recovery. Although there is zero chance of this happening, the market’s absurd rally for incomprehensible cyclical reasons  implied strongly otherwise. Lo, stocks fell hard for just one day on Thursday and the sunny stories on the front page vanished to make room for news about about a supposedly resurgent pandemic.  Recall that Wall Street had no trouble shrugging off this story when it surfaced statistically perhaps a week earlier; now the same story, with a few more deaths, inspires only fear.

Every news outlet in the country that covers the stock market attributed Thursday’s sharp drop to renewed Covid-19 fears. All of them were flat-out wrong. Stocks turned lower simply because the most important stock of all, Apple, hit an important Hidden Pivot rally target at 354.47 that had been disseminated to Rick’s Picks subscribers a week earlier with the stock trading $30 lower. AAPL, the 800-pound gorilla of market bellwethers, was due for a downturn regardless of what the coronavirus was doing. The spin on news stories about deepening recession and the spread of Covid-19 will continue to reflect the stock market’s cyclical ups and downs, which, more than the spread of the disease itself, determine the mood of headline writers and of America itself.