What's up with the stock market today?

[panader0]

When I first saw it this morning, the Dow was down 150 points or so. Then later it was 15 points up. Now it's way down again. What's cauing this fluctuation? I'm certainly no expert at all on the market, but it seems to me that there is usually a trend for the day, not this back and forth.

[bluestateguy]

1. Tends to happen on days of mixed economic data

Bad: Manufacturing data came in low.

Good: The 2Q GDP was revised upward from -1.0 to -0.7.

[ShortnFiery]

2. It's "volatility" ... the players don't know which way to bet on this grand Ponzi scheme.

Remember that it was "volatility" on the stock market that was one of the early predictors of an impending DEPRESSION?

No worries though, US clueless taxpayers have already covered the ruling class bets so they'll be able to secure themselves behind gated communities when the bottom drops out.

[budkin]

3. How low does it have to get before the wingnuts start blaming Obama again?

Notice how they haven't given him credit for it being so high for the past couple months?

[notesdev]

4. It's getting ready for a full-blown crash

but every time it tries (to achieve its natural equilibrium), Bernanke weakens the dollar, which props up prices. But Ben doesn't have any more room to work with this time, if he doesn't want to chance a total currency collapse.

[Recursion]

5. Variance. It's why it's stupid for commentators to "explain" 0.5 stddev fluctuations

Stock price fluctuations are tail-heavy to begin with, and have a pretty wide variance. There's no particular explanation any more than there is for why wind gusts happen when and where they do.