I found the following three headlines juxtaposed on a Yahoo! Website investing page:
| • | ^DJI | Indications: U.S. stock futures drift lower ahead of data at MarketWatch (Wed 8:10am) |
| • | ^DJI | US STOCKS-Futures flat ahead of economic data at Reuters (Wed 7:55am) |
| • | ^DJI | Indications: U.S. stock futures tick higher ahead of data at MarketWatch (Wed 6:02am) |
| • | ^DJI ^IXIC |
Wall Street set to edge up in shortened session Reuters (Wed 5:07am) |
It appears that no matter what the market action, the explanation is the same.
I once heard a speaker at a Portland meeting of the American Association of Individual Investors explain this phenomenon. He was a psychologist by vocation and an investor by avocation. He said that among professional psychologists this kind of sequence of statements from a client would be called confabulation.
The www.FreeDictionary.com gives confabulation this definition:
2. Psychology To fill in gaps in one’s memory with fabrications that one believes to be facts.