NEW YORK — The stock market experienced significant volatility Tuesday in response to something, according to seventeen financial analysts who each identified a different something as the cause.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 847 points before recovering 623 points before dropping 211 points before closing up 14 points, a performance described as “chaotic,” “perfectly normal given the circumstances,” and “exactly what we predicted, though in the opposite direction.”

“Markets are reacting to uncertainty,” said financial strategist Warren Blankcheck of Goldman Blankcheck Asset Management, speaking from behind a desk that cost more than most Americans’ cars. “When investors don’t know what’s happening, they respond by doing things. That’s really what we’re seeing here.”

CNBC convened an emergency panel of six experts who agreed the market was “definitely moving” and that this was “meaningful in some way” before disagreeing on literally every other point for forty-five consecutive minutes.

"The fundamentals are strong. Or they're weak. The important thing is that I've used the word 'fundamentals,' which makes this feel more serious than it is."

Proposed explanations for Tuesday’s market activity included: Federal Reserve language, geopolitical tension in a region a reporter mispronounced twice, earnings reports, a tweet, inflation expectations, deflation concerns, something about tariffs, the price of soybeans, vibes, and one analyst’s suggestion that “investors are simply reacting to investors reacting.”

“The reality,” explained economist Dr. Patricia Numbercrunch of the Center for Economic Observations, “is that markets are a collective psychological phenomenon responding to a complex web of global inputs that no individual can fully model. Alternatively, someone with a lot of money got nervous.”

Market Summary

**Dow:** ↓↑↓↑ (net: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) **Things that definitely caused this:** Everything / Nothing / Both **Who got hurt:** People who can least afford it **Who got a bonus:** Analysts who predicted any of this correctly by accident **Outlook:** Uncertain (this word will appear in 400 financial articles today)

Retail investors, watching their portfolios fluctuate by amounts that would give their grandparents heart attacks, were advised by multiple financial platforms to “stay calm,” “think long-term,” and “definitely not look at their phones every ten minutes,” advice they immediately read on their phones before looking again ten minutes later.

The market is expected to do something tomorrow. Analysts will explain it afterward.