BROOKE GLADSTONE: One big source of speculation here was whether Saddam's capture would move the markets.

FEMALE ANCHOR: Does seem that the capture of Saddam Hussein is having an effect just about everywhere we look today. What does it mean to our pockets? CNBC's Ron Insana is here with Saddam's effect on the world of finance. Hi, there, Ron. How are the markets looking?

RON INSANA: Well, Chris, so far...

BROOKE GLADSTONE: They could have spared themselves the trouble of asking. It turned out the markets didn't move much. As Bob first reported in September, the compulsion to tie market movements to external events is more of a reflex for financial reporters than anything based in reality.

BOB GARFIELD:This is the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. [AMBIENT SOUND] Amid the hustle and bustle on Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 87 points, or just under one percent of its value. The Nasdaq was off a hundred points. Why? CNBC seemed to know. [PROGRAM MUSIC]

MAN: Welcome back. A busy news day. The market's moving a little bit lower today...word of a new tape from Osama bin Laden causing the markets to sort of fall off the table there.

BOB GARFIELD:Got that? Over a period of 6 and a half hours, millions of investors traded billions of shares of stock because of word of a new tape from Osama bin Laden. The day before both the Dow and the Nasdaq were down because, according to the Associated Press, of a disappointing revenue outlook for Nokia and investor profit-taking. The day before that, according to USAToday.com, the dow was up 83 points, due to optimism about the economy. Really?!

RAY GOLDBACHER: That's as reasonable as anything.

BOB GARFIELD: Ray Goldbacher is the money editor at USAToday.com.

RAY GOLDBACHER: You know, every day 3 billion shares change hands. Who knows why? I mean, the best you can do is try to take the temperature of the predominant trend. Analysts and journalists find ways to explain the market no matter what it does, or try.

BOB GARFIELD:They do try. Every trading day, reporters at the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and a dozen other news organizations are expected to distill millions of discrete financial decisions and divine a single motivating factor. Some days it's a Commerce Department report on business inventories. Sometimes it's a jump in IBM's earnings. Sometimes it's the mysterious "technical factors" or dropping oil prices, or terrorism jitters, or investor optimism, or -- the magical, all-encompassing "profit-taking." Dan Gross covers Wall Street for Slate.com.

DAN GROSS: Of course, there's profit-taking every single minute of every single day. It's a very convenient shorthand for-- "Oh, well, gee --we don't know why the Dow went down 70 points."

BOB GARFIELD: But, Gross says, his colleagues do know how to find someone to float a theory.

DAN GROSS:You have a number of sources -- guys you know you can call for a quote -- and the guys on the other end have a limited number of things that they will say. It was down on profit-taking, up on optimism, concern about profits -- you know, there are a set number of factors that everybody will say.

BOB GARFIELD:One source often turned to for the daily analysis is Hugh Johnson, chairman of asset management for the investment banking house First Albany Corporation. With his more than three decades of market experience, Johnson carefully considers corporate fundamentals, external news events, trading patterns known as "technicals," the push and pull of other markets such as commodities, bonds and currency trading, and his long-cultivated instinct for the psychology of the trading floor. And then -- he guesses.

HUGH JOHNSON: It's a real giant leap of faith to say this is what's been on the minds of investors and made them make decisions, cause you obviously don't survey every investor. But you get a sense that the markets tend to respond or react to news in a fairly -- fairly predictable way. Having done this for a while, it's probably a pretty good guess that these events do in --somehow, some manner -- affect investors.

BOB GARFIELD:Or, you know -- not. [BAR AMBIENCE] We are in the Irish Punt Saloon, a favorite hangout for brokers and traders, shortly after the closing bell on a sultry summer afternoon. We approach a young Wall Streeter named Anthony Piocosta.

BOB GARFIELD: I need your expert analysis. Nasdaq was down 21 points today - a little over one percent -why?

ANTHONY PIOCOSTA:Oh, there's a few reasons actually. One of the reasons was that Cisco came out with earnings, and their expectations were as great as said to be, and Cisco is pretty much one of the largest of the Nasdaq composites, so it pulls down the average very easily.

BOB GARFIELD: Quick followup question. Are you sure?

ANTHONY PIOCOSTA: Am I sure? Positive.

BOB GARFIELD: Then we collar his pal, Dieter Uber. The Nasdaq was down about 1 percent today. Why?

DIETER UBER:The Nasdaq's down now because technicals are taking over - there's - it's like 16-75, 16-90 we're sitting at. Once it broke that level, now technicals on the Nasdaq are actually taking over, and the traders will just fight to sell, because they're up.

BOB GARFIELD: You sure about that?

DIETER UBER: Yes. As for the Nasdaq being down today, it's because of technicals.

BOB GARFIELD:Then finally we turned to their colleague, Kieren Lockhern, who crunches the same numbers on Nasdaq's dip and draws an entirely different and stunning conclusion.

KIEREN LOCKHERN: It's probably just overheated. You know? Numbers have come out; there's nothing to take us up any further. Now people eventually look at the profits that they have and realize--either take 'me or-- get off the pot.

BOB GARFIELD: So a little bit of profit-taking.

KIEREN LOCKHERN: Yeah. Sure.

BOB GARFIELD:Ah. Profit taking. But if single factor analysis sometimes seems silly - or worse - at least one Wall Street watcher staunchly defends the practice. He is David Wilson, managing editor for global stock markets at Bloomberg News, the organization that revolutionized financial journalism with up-to-the-second reports delivered to your desktop. Wilson insists that trading days do follow miniature trends and themes, with certain critical events assuming disproportionate influence.

DAVID WILSON: There are days when it's pretty straightforward - you, you get a figure - you know it might be a company earnings, it might be an economic report -- and that really does set the tone for the day! And, and you see it even before trading begins, because you're looking at what's happening overseas with the futures markets, with U.S. stocks traded there, and it may be that whatever the theme is at 8:30 in the morning carries all the way through the day.

BOB GARFIELD:Hence, on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg as well as CNBC, what really mattered was the latest video from Osama bin Laden. Or-- you know -- not.

LOU DOBBS: I'm very suspicious of anybody who looks at a market monolithically.

BOB GARFIELD: Lou Dobbs of CNN's nightly Lou Dobbs Tonight is among the most influential and respected financial journalists in the world. He rolls his eyes at the simplistic art of the Wall Street Market Wrap, but he also acknowledges his occasional complicity because of the time constraints of broadcast television, and, he says, the demands of the audience.

LOU DOBBS: There's not enough space in newspapers, there's not enough time on television or radio to give the explanation as it's deserved, and frankly the audience wouldn't want it anyway in most cases -- the broader audience. Because it is complex, and it takes far too much time. So we revert to traditional shorthand that, that while wrong, is-- expedient.

BOB GARFIELD: What if the press covered Congress the way it covers the Street?

LOU DOBBS: They do. [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD:Well-- not really. Although, you can certainly say this: this week the House and the Senate blocked a proposed Commerce Department rule that would have limited overtime pay for millions of workers -- on concerns about -- profit taking. [MUSIC]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, why the kids love video games. We thought it was the mayhem, but one reporter says it's the stories that grab 'em.

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media, from NPR.

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