Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"No, not at all. I think there are two reasons for why it's not. One is that the stock market will always look at what is expected. That is, they factor in facts and statistics that they think are going to occur. And so, for example, when the news came out recently about the unemployment rate going up and faster inflation, the stock market already expected that. So in street lingo - Wall Street street lingo - they had already priced those changes into stocks. So it wasn't a surprise. The second thing is that the stock market is always looking ahead. Again, we're in a slowdown if not an outright recession. The unemployment rate goes up. It's always happened. We know that. So the stock market is really not looking at the unemployment rate. They're trying to look ahead. Where is the economy going to be three months from now, six months from now? And, indeed, on the week that you mentioned, when we had the bad news about jobs and inflation, there was actually some good news that came out about corporate earnings. So this actually caused the stock market to think, hey, maybe the bottom's been reached on the economy and we're going to be much better off down the road. So keep these two things in mind about the stock market. One is that the stock market reacts to the unexpected, not to what is expected. And secondly, the stock market is always looking forward."