Ground by the Rumor Mill

Since the close on Thursday, the market has been through four big movements, shown below:

1. The red rectangle denotes when AAPL and AMZN did their earnings reports which, in sharp contrast with MSFT and META the day prior, were both duds.

2. The blue rectangle marks when rumors began to swirl that China and the U.S. were - gasp! - talking about a trade deal. T…