Ryan and I were just working with a student on an assignment where he had to find out what economic news affected the markets during a particular time period. Another student asked the same question yesterday in a slightly different way: What was happening in the economy that changed libor rates during one month in 2007? We found two approaches that work well.
Use Dismal Scientist. Choose the Country pages for the United States from the tab at the top of the page. Then use the drop down menu to pick a date. You can choose any month and year back to 2006. The results are both announcements of the release of economic indicators and market wrap-up news and analysis.
Use Factiva. In order not be be overwhelmed with too many stories, set up your search like this. From “Subjects” in the indexing boxes, open “Content Types” and click on “”Page One Stories.” Also from “Subjects,” choose “Economic News” and “and” it with your page one stories. Then pick a source. You can use just The Wall Street Journal, but I liked the results when I used the Dow Jones Publications from “Sources by Type.”
This week’s New Yorker features an interesting article by John Cassidy, “Rational Irrationality,” that compares market behavior to a pedestrian bridge in London that shook a little when each person walked on it, which made pedestrians react with a gait that furthered the shaking in a feedback loop that ultimately made the bridge really unsteady at times.