I'm glad someone else recognizes the farce that is the implied cause-effect analysis of economic trends. "Stocks tumble as mywittyname avoids lunch time taco truck for fourth week in a row. Taco tariffs feared."

The accurate, but boring headline is almost always, "stock (tumble|gain) as algorithmic traders reinforce trend. Further news may occur."

I'm pretty sure I've seen this pattern of "Stocks (tumble|gain) as X happened" but then 2 hours later if the stocks go in the other direction, there is a new headline "Stocks (tumble|gain) as X happened" where X remains the same, but tumble|gain got swapped.

I think I originally read that this happens in a book somewhere, then observed and noticed yeah that seems to be the norm. Not surprised it seems to be same thing in these adjacent metric % headlines where there's no proper thought if there exists a causal link between X and Y.

I think my brain has learned to recognize the pattern "Something rises X% as Thing Happened" and it reminds me of that cheeky quote about how every headline that is in the form of a question is, ... uh I forgot the full quote. But feels like almost this could have some kind of cheeky rule of its own, about how no causal link ever exists in a headline like this.

> a book somewhere

Black Swan by Nassim Taleb?

I think not, because doesn't ring a bell at all. It was a book related to stock market though, IIRC it was a Canadian author who described their career as a day-trader and how they thought of how markets work. I wish I remembered better but it was quite long ago, and I don't have said book anymore. My book likely came out after that book, so maybe my author picked it up from others.

That book however you mentioned, I just looked it up and it seems interesting. Might put on my read list.

Michael Lewis wrote a ton on this topic. He's not Canadian, but his books are really good, if financial non-fiction is your thing. He wrote The Big Short, among others (Flash Boys is a good one).

More sellers than buyers.

Actually, it's even more devious than that.

They use wording -- just like this article does -- like "X happens as Y also happens".

The keyword being "as" and not "because" or "due to".

It implies causality, by coupling both in the same title, without technically linking the two.

E.g. "Stocks fall as rate increase looms"

They're basically just saying two things happened at the same time, or one after the other, but one didn't necessarily cause the other.

IOW, they know they can't link the two -- i.e. they can't user words like "because" or "due to" -- but they also know that by coupling them in the same headline, readers will still infer causality.

I have specifically noticed this pattern with the red-flag headline word “amid”. It always means the beta coeffficent is 0 but they want you to think it’s 1.

“President announces crackdown on immigration amid ongoing success of Taylor Swift’s new album”.

My partner and I make an informal hobby of tracking language like that which is designed to sneakily water down the strength of a headline. "Amid" rather than "because of" is a really good one. My personal favorite is "Reports: ". If you just preface your headline with that, you can say any old thing you want to and then later when pressed on the truth value of it you can retreat to the idea that you weren't reporting that as fact, you were reporting the fact that other people are saying it and you're not obligated to say who or how many or any other things that people might be saying. The practical upshot is that you as a journalist get to purposely induce people to believe something you know to be false but no one can technically call you a liar.

“We’re not sure what exactly is going on inside the town of Beaverton, Tom, but we’re reporting that there’s looting, raping and yes, even acts of cannibalism.”

“My God, you’ve actually seen people looting, raping and eating each other?”

“No, we haven’t actually seen it Tom, we’re just reporting it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCkchBXiaOE

Remember that a journalist is someone who sells your attention to advertisers, not someone who sells you an accurate picture of world events. It's far better for them to be wrong about something chaotic and unverifiable like the cause of a short term unemployment spike than to admit that they don't know. Sometimes it's better for them not to know the cause of something when it's mundane and they can bait you with the mystery, like the NJ drones that we all obsessed over for a month that turned out to be part of an R&D agreement that was a matter of public record and could have shot the whole story down on day one if it had been reported.