Anthropomorphic Stock Market

Here's another entry on the list of things that drive me nuts: I hate when to local news cuts away some mercenary reporter standing on a balcony overlooking the New York Stock Exchange. Inevitably, she says something like, "The market was tentative today, closing down nearly 40 points on fears that tomorrow's consumer price index report will be below forecasts."

First of all, the market is inanimate. It cannot be tentative or skittish or aggressive. Sure, you can use those words as adjectives to describe the market's movement, but it doesn't make them into emotions that the stock market actually experiences. Personification is fine for poetry and novellas but it has no place in the daily news.

Second, nobody can really know for sure why the market rises or falls. The market is the net result of thousands of traders doing their own thing. Sure, analysts can speculate on the cause for a rise or fall, and most of the time, they're probably correct. But unless you ask everyone trading on the market about what they did that day and why, an assertion about the cause for market activity is merely an unsubstantiated hypothesis. For accuracy, these reporters should preface their statements by saying "analysts believe..." or "several traders concur...."

Then again, when was the last time we expected accurate reporting or proper source crediting from the local news?