{"id":714,"date":"2008-10-14T11:15:39","date_gmt":"2008-10-14T15:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=714"},"modified":"2008-10-15T09:07:28","modified_gmt":"2008-10-15T13:07:28","slug":"market-verbs-and-market-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=714","title":{"rendered":"Market verbs and market performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visiting the New York Times<\/a> homepage has become rather predictable over the last few weeks. The only question: will the headline scream that the markets are soaring<\/em> or plummeting<\/em>?<\/p>\n

With the anniversary of Black Monday<\/a> near (and the prospect of another such Monday looming), I got curious about what financial headlines have been like over the past few decades. The Times search links are amenable to reverse engineering, so I was able to get 23,372 headlines mentioning stocks<\/em>, markets<\/em>, dow<\/em>, nasdaq,<\/em> from October 13, 1981 to October 13, 2008. This seems like a large enough data set to explore the question, What have the markets been doing since 1981 — or, more accurately, what has the Times been saying<\/em> that the markets have been doing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I first tabulated the most frequent verbs appearing in the frame stocks\/markets\/dow\/shares\/nasdaq VERB<\/strong> for each of the years. A table listing the top three such verbs for each year is included at the bottom of this post. It is somewhat revealing. For example, up<\/em> is #1 from 1987-1992, when it is unseated by fall<\/em>. I suppose this is the move from Wall Street<\/a> to Clockers<\/a>. Also, I was surprised that fall<\/em> won the day even during the first .com era<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, those rankings are based on low counts in some cases, so I think it is more revealing to move up one level of abstraction. The union of the top 10 verbs from each year has just 52 members, so it was fairly easy for me to sort them by hand into the categories rising<\/strong>, falling<\/strong>, and other<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Table 1<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
rising<\/td>\nadvance, climb, gain, jump, rally, rise, soar, surge, up<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
falling<\/td>\ndecline, dip, dive, down, drop, fall, lose, lower, plummet, plunge, retreat, skid, slide, slip, tumble<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
other<\/td>\naverage, bill, close, continue, drift, edge, end, finish, golf, hold, idle, index, lead, move, note, offer, open, plant, post, profit, question, reach, school, sell, set, steady, take, watch <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

I'll say it's a U<\/strong> year when rising verbs outnumber falling verbs, a D<\/strong> year when the reverse is true, and an E<\/strong> year when the counts are equal. Let's see how well the Times' language tracks performance of the Dow:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dow performance and the language used to describe it (click to enlarge)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Correlating<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

(Update 2008-10-15<\/strong>: See below for a more fine-grained look at a small slice of time<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

It looks like a pretty good fit between the language and the market. I find this reassuring in the following sense: few of us have the expertise to interpret the quantitative information in these headlines. Is a 13% gain\/loss good, bad, outstanding, miserable, or just another day on the Street? What about a 200 point change? It can be hard to say, so we look to the verbs to determine what the news really is. Geoff Nunberg and I both offered comments on this for a thoughtful NJ Star-Ledger piece last April<\/a>. I think Geoff nails it when he says that this language helps us move from an unfamiliar quantitative realm to a more familiar qualitative one.<\/p>\n

The next step is a closer look at these market verbs. Is there a reliable difference between soaring<\/em> and plain rising<\/em>, for example? And, with (the anniversary of) Black Monday approaching, it will be interesting to study the language of market crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Table 2: Top 3 verbs in
\n stocks\/markets\/dow\/shares\/nasdaq VERB<\/strong>
\n sorted by decreasing frequency<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1981<\/td>\noffer, drift, lead<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1982<\/td>\nlead, bill, up<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1983<\/td>\nlead, up, tumble<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1984<\/td>\nlead, offer, reach<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1985<\/td>\nset, drop, soar<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1986<\/td>\nplunge, rise, gain<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1987<\/td>\nup, fall, plunge<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1988<\/td>\nup, end, climb<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1989<\/td>\nup, rise, fall<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1990<\/td>\nup, fall, rise<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1991<\/td>\nup, rise, fall<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1992<\/td>\nup, rise, down<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1993<\/td>\nfall, up, drop<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1994<\/td>\nfall, rise, up<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1995<\/td>\nfall, rise, up<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1996<\/td>\nfall, rise, up<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1997<\/td>\nfall, rise, up<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1998<\/td>\nfall, rise, up<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1999<\/td>\nfall, rise, soar<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2000<\/td>\nfall, drop, rise<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2001<\/td>\nfall, rise, tumble<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2002<\/td>\nfall, drop, rise<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2003<\/td>\nfall, rise, surge<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2004<\/td>\nfall, plunge, rise<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2005<\/td>\nfall, rally, rise<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2006<\/td>\nfall, up, rise<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2007<\/td>\nfall, rise, up<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2008<\/td>\nfall, rise, lower<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Update (2008-10-15)<\/strong><\/a>: The comments provided useful suggestions for how to organize and visualize the information. Here is a graph for fiscal years 1996-1999, which were turbulent and thus rich in headline data. The vertical scale is logarithmic. The predicates below each quarter are the top 3 from that quarter, with the most frequent at the top. As above, U<\/strong> means that the quarter had more positive predicates (according to table 1), D<\/strong> means the quarter had more negative predicates, and E<\/strong> means that the positive and negative counts were the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dow performance, fiscal years 1996-1999, with top predicates and general trends<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Fiscal<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visiting the New York Times homepage has become rather predictable over the last few weeks. The only question: will the headline scream that the markets are soaring or plummeting? With the anniversary of Black Monday near (and the prospect of another such Monday looming), I got curious about what financial headlines have been like over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,46,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-the-media","category-pragmatics","category-words-words-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}