Why is Dow Jones Stock Down Today?

You've got to love journalists and their spurious causalities. Today, there was news about two analysts' opinions regarding the Rupert Murdoch bid for Dow Jones. Edward Atorino, of Benchmark, said that Murdoch will raise his bid, while Richard Greenfield, of Pali Capital, said that he will withdraw it.

The only sensible conclusion to draw from all this, of course, is that nobody knows anything. But wait! Dow Jones stock is down 4% on the day! So clearly, the market is reacting to Greenfield, as both Reuters and AP are reporting.

Maybe the market is just reacting to Joe Nocera's column on Saturday, in which he said that Dow Jones is "the worst-run media company in the country," and has managed to stay that way only because of the passivity of its controlling shareholders, the Bancroft family, who don't understand the media industry and who suffer from a chronic case of paralysis.

More likely, the market is just doing what markets always do, which is move. When a stock is trading on one utterly unknown variable -- whether or not Rupert will manage to buy it -- it will naturally exhibit quite a lot of volatility. Today's price action is entirely consistent with no market-moving news emerging, and journalists should think better of attributing enormous power to the likes of Mr Greenfield.