As a reformed macro-market propagandist, I’m a recognized authority on negative economic news.

I’ve been “in the room,” so to speak. I know how the sausage is made, and true to that off-putting old idiom, it ain’t pretty.

Over a decade, I’ve seen the mainstream financial media adopt some (many) of the tactics I learned as a member of what, back then, in 2015, was a three-man team which punched wildly above its weight in web traffic terms.

During the height of the Greek debt crisis, the three of us (my old employer, our “chart guy” and myself) nearly matched the daily traffic of Reuters. That’s completely true, or true to the best of my recollection. Such is the power of bearish macro-market agitprop. Small wonder large outlets learned from us.

It’s that experience which makes me question whether — or, more aptly, to what extent — the mainstream financial media is itself responsible for the so-called “vibecession” in America. I strongly suspect that media outlets are feeding the very phenomenon they often document.

Anyway, I say all of that to set up the figure below, which shows the San Francisco Fed’s Daily News Sentiment Index hitting a multi-year low.

If you’re unfamiliar, the gauge uses lexical analysis to derive a high-frequency index from economics-related news published by two-dozen major US media outlets.

Suffice to say the war’s dragging on that measure by throwing off all sorts of negative-sounding headlines and copy.

The more relevant chart is the figure below. Hat tip to BMO’s Ian Lyngen — he used the same chart in his weekly.

As you can see, that gauge of news sentiment is now even more dour than it was this time last year. That’s saying something considering the circumstances which prevailed in March and April of 2025. (Trump had already unveiled a lot of trade levies and was just days away from the botched rollout of the “reciprocal tariffs” which pushed the S&P to the brink of a bear market.)

While editorializing around the second chart, Lyngen offered a less sanguine assessment than Bill Ackman, who on Monday encouraged investors to buy the dip.

“The parallels between the beginnings of 2025 and 2026 go beyond the evolution of economic news sentiment, as similarities can also be seen in the performance of financial conditions,” Ian said, calling the stability of risk assets “a clear concern.”

“We’re not suggesting that US equity valuations are poised for a post-‘Liberation Day’-magnitude bearish correction,” he went on. “But the longer the conflict extends, the more nervous we’d become about stocks and financial conditions.”