If you’ve taken even a cursory glance at the Internet, or the TV, or a newspaper since Donald Trump was elected, you know that for someone in his position, the ex–real-estate developer is abnormally obsessed with the stock market. At one point, he was taking credit for equities having a good trading session every 35 hours, doing victory laps whenever the Dow closed up a couple hundred points, and claiming, like the pathological maniac he is, that if Hillary Clinton had been elected president, “stocks would be down 50 percent,” analysis he obtained from equity-research firm Pulled Out of My Ass, L.L.C. So the fact that his ongoing trade skirmishes have not been received favorably by Wall Street is clearly both surprising and upsetting to “Tariff Man,” who continues to insist that slapping other countries with punitive measures that Americans pay for is a good thing. But rather than, say, calling off his self-defeating battle with China, Trump decided over the weekend to take a different tack in an effort to soothe investor fears about a protracted trade war: lie through his caps about striking an “incredible” deal with Beijing, a maneuver he clearly believed the market would thank him for with a rally the likes of which Wall Street had never seen.

Instead, once it became clear the president was full of it, stocks dropped precipitously, with the Dow ending the week down having wiped out its gains for the year. And for the life of him, President Buy and Sell can’t figure out why:

As the stock market churned this week, President Trump anxiously called advisers both inside and outside the White House looking for validation that his talks with China were not driving the sell-off.

Fresh off what he described as a “historic” weekend meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping, Mr. Trump has questioned why the markets weren’t reacting more positively to the news of his potential breakthrough with Beijing.

Yes, what a mystery! Apparently everyone realizing it wasn’t a breakthrough at all—JPMorgan described Trump’s claims as “if not completely fabricated then grossly exaggerated with reality”—is an explanation the president never considered. Luckily, though he may never figure out why the market didn’t reward him for lying about a supposed deal like his kids lie about condo sales, Trump can sleep easy knowing exactly who to blame for the fact that the S&P are on pace for their worst quarter in seven years: