Let’s be completely transparent for a moment. People said yesterday that stocks took a step back because the job market was too strong. And yet today we got evidence that the job market isn’t as strong as we thought . . . but stocks didn’t bounce back with the news.

This tells me something important about Wall Street psychology right now. When both a strong job market and a weak one are interpreted as sell signals, people are simply in the mood to sell and will cling to any excuse even when the logic simply doesn’t add up.

After all, even if a strong job market were a bad thing, doesn’t that mean a weak one is a good thing? If some economic indicator is running too hot, shouldn’t a report that things are cooling off come as a relief?

Yesterday Wall Street economists were practically begging for a slowdown in hiring after hearing that private employers added 497,000 new workers to their payrolls last month. That’s a lot hotter than expected. Those who worry that continued demand for labor will act as a red flag in front of the Fed got plenty of support for their argument.

But then today, a different survey showed that hiring across the entire economy did in fact cool off significantly last month. Employers are still hiring more people than they’re laying off. It’s just that compared to yesterday’s numbers, they aren’t hiring quite as aggressively as the market thought yesterday.

In other words, the fear factor that a red-hot job market will poke the Fed to make more drastic moves has largely receded. We’ll need to wait a month or two to see which survey was an aberration and how the numbers were distorted, but for now, the important thing is that the question hasn’t been conclusively settled either way.

And that’s the “tell” in the way Wall Street reacted to the data. If it was as simple as today’s headline number raising questions around what we saw yesterday, logic would dictate that the market would discount both sets of numbers and revert to the status quo . . . taking the S&P 500 back where it was on Wednesday in the process.

After all, in that scenario, we’d see the two surveys cancel out and leave our sense of the economy and the investment environment completely unchanged. I think that’s actually what happened. All the talk about the job market is just a screen for traders looking for that excuse to sell.

Because I think the real sell signal was a lot more basic and more brutal. When 10-year bond yields climbed above 4% yesterday, stocks no longer made quite so much sense in a macro or “big picture” view. People sold some stocks.

But they didn’t pour that money into bonds because yields didn’t go back down. Remember, bond yields move down when demand for bonds goes up. And demand for bonds goes up when investors try to get in position for a looming recession or other slowdown.

Demand for bonds did not go up. That makes sense because the economic numbers coming out of the job market in particular remain solidly in the expansion column. While everyone is constantly looking over their shoulder for that recession, it looks farther away than ever now.

For one thing, long-term bond yields have been so depressed lately that shorter-term debt now pays significantly higher interest rates. That’s a classic recession indicator. With those long yields RISING, the indicator no longer flashes quite so bright in the danger zone.

Add it all up, I don’t see any deep logic here at all beyond some program traders recognizing that 4% yields have historically made Wall Street nervous. It’s a psychological hurdle like a lot of round numbers. We simply have to grit through the tension and come out the other side.

However, we’ve already seen that the world doesn’t end when long-term bonds hit 4%. Life more or less goes on. The economy definitely doesn’t suddenly implode. (If it did, the Fed would take quick and breathtaking action.)

Meanwhile, the Fed was coming either way. All that tough talk in the last few weeks has got to be backed up with at least one rate hike in the next six months. Everyone knew that. It’s not new information.

So if the only clear sell signal in all this noise is itself a kind of fakeout, I think this is a buy signal. But as always, you’ll want to be selective. If you’re truly worried about a recession, don’t own stocks that are deteriorating in the current economic environment . . . buy growth instead!