alt Hacker NewsThere are several reasons. Most obviously it's because the markets are closed which keeps immediate panic from affecting stock prices. It's also at the start of the weekend so the idea is that people might be more focused on weekend activities instead of the news. Also, news coverage on the weekend is often reheated stories written during the week meaning that a Friday story is less likely to get picked up.
Right, but these “common sense” reasons aren’t very satisfying, it’s easy to imagine scenarios where they’d be wrong. Eg, this is a pretty significant change of US policy, and I can imagine that the weekend will just allow tension to build. I’m more interested in proper studies