The Stock Market Is Really Jittery Right Now

Yesterday the stock market surged, supposedly on news that a trade deal with China was in the works. Today, the stock market has plummeted, supposedly on news that Trump lied about how likely a deal really is. If all this is actually true, it means that Wall Street investors are idiots. They can’t possibly still be taking Trump’s tweets at face value, can they?

There’s no telling, really. In any case, explanations of why the market has gone up or down on any particular day should always be taken with a shaker of salt. The more likely explanation is shown in this chart:

The market has been volatile ever since October. If I knew why I’d be a billionaire, and for all you know, maybe I am. But I’m not. So I have no idea why everyone has gotten so jittery over the past couple of months. Whatever the reason, though, this week’s ups and downs are most likely just the same jitters that began in October. I doubt they really have anything to do with Trump’s Twitter idiocies at all.

Speaking of which, did you hear that Trump signed the new and improved NAFTA treaty while he was in Argentina? Unfortunately, our dealmaker-in-chief, who’s signed so many deals you wouldn’t believe it, couldn’t figure out where to sign this one.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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