On Friday evening, Fox News displayed a bar graph showing how well the stock market performed after historical instances of attacking and killing Black people. It’s a somewhat ghoulish graphic to release following the murders of George Floyd and Jamel Floyd (no relation) by police and the nationwide protests that have received even more police violence.
“Historically there has been a disconnect between what investors focus on and what happens in the rest of the country,” the Fox News anchorwoman said of the graphic. “For instance in 1968, the week after the tragedy of Martin Luther King, the S&P 500 rose over two percent. Also, up the week of the Rodney King ruling.”
The chart’s data seems to have been taken from a Fortune article entitled, “The stock market has a long history of ignoring social upheaval” in which investment research CEO David Trainer said, “Social unrest issues have very little long-term impact on markets.” The article went on to say that the stock markets tend to look ahead to fiscal responses to international trade conditions and support from the federal government rather than immediate civil unrest.
Other news networks also discussed this week how stock markets react to traumatic news, but none had a graphic such as this. And while Fox News didn’t say it, many Twitter users seemed horrified of the graph’s implication that the stock market thrives off of Black death and the network displaying the graphic in the first place.