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ceiling that it brushed up against in Jan-

uary and February.

Still, the comeback was good enough

to excite Lou Dobbs, the Fox Business

commentator. ‘‘On Wall Street today...

stocks skyrocketing!’’ he told his audience

on Friday night. The screen cut to green

bars of the three major stock indexes,

with three green northbound arrows.

Dobbs chanted the numbers as though

they were a home-team box score. Then

the broadcast cut to a printout of the day’s

minute-by-minute ticker. Floating above

the rising line were some black zigzags

that faintly resembled cursive letters:

the president’s signature. Trump was

already eager to declare his victory over

the virus’s economic symptoms, even as

the government’s response to the disease

itself was just beginning.

‘‘The president celebrating his, uh,

signature day today,’’ Dobbs said, stum-

bling a bit as he downshifted from bullish

incantation. ‘‘The White House sent along

to me a, uh’’ — and here he chuckled —

‘‘signed chart of the skyrocketing Dow.’’

There is so much to Dobbs’s chuckle:

an acknowledgment of the shameless-

ness of Trump’s gesture tempered by an

almost parental familiarity with his ras-

cally ways, with notes, even, of complicity

and grudging appreciation. Trump and

Dobbs, after all, were each working hard

to shore up an endangered idea — that the

smart thing to do with your money is to

buy and hold a portfolio consisting mostly

of diversifi ed stocks and to keep hanging

onto that portfolio no matter how much it

goes down, because the American econ-

omy is a good bet over the long run, and

stocks will always, inevitably, go back up,

providing average annualized returns of

5 to 7 percent a year to those who are

stalwart enough to ride out the bumps,

thus vindicating the stock market as

something more than a zero-sum game.

In good times, this advice seems like a

scientifi c law of nature. When things go

bad, it’s something closer to a religion.

After Friday, as the scale of potential

American deaths became clear, the Dow

began to spurn Trump’s supplications.

Trump, like an ardent suitor, gave chase.

His once-obscure Coronavirus Task Force

‘‘BIGGEST

STOCK MARKET

RISE IN

HISTORY

YESTERDAY!’’

President

Trump on Twitter,

March 14

‘‘The Dow had its

worst point

drop ever as stocks

tumbled again.’’

CNN, March 16