For many years now, most of the world’s insight into the financial markets comes in a 5 second pre-commercial blurb near the end of the nightly news. Some version of Brian Williams stating “… Wall Street closed today with the DOW up 25 on a well-received jobs report. And in other news, a panda learned to wipe himself…” No real shock that this disservice hurt millions of retirement accounts – delaying that beachside condo purchase in Bonita Springs – at least until the balance is “back up again”.
Logic would suggest at least some of these IRA/401k investors would pay a little more attention to financial media (albeit mainstream financial media), in an effort to avoid the financial illiteracy which was so costly the first time. I continue to expect the herds of sheeple to maintain focus on Honey Boo Boo, however, the job of defeating one’s own ignorance is made more difficult by the mainstream data sources available.
Screenshot from my Google News section at 1pm today:
A couple of thoughts:
- + I know it’s an election year and POTUS spoke last night just before the BLS report, but since when is the AFL-CIO blog a credible news source (and might I add the #1 “story”)? Note also the small attention-span favoring headline v the 1st 3 storylines.
- + Oil at $96 … oh wait – traders are “confident in the ECB” … Whew! For a minute I was concerned rising gas prices might hurt the economy.
- + “Bad, But Not QE-Bad” … yep, keep everyone in limbo; the jawboning works better.
- + Euro Plan … Nothing like getting broke nations that can’t pay any bills to borrow from themselves … but I guess it’s a net win when you still can’t pay at the lower APR%.
- + Canadian jobs … Thanks Washington Post. I figured between the DNC finale, BLS report dropping 1.5 million people so it can show 8.1% unemployment (while the real # is 11.7%), and the NASDAQ hitting multi-year highs on fumes, you would’ve had- at best- investigative journalism, and at worst- more regurgitated AP wire news. Guess not. If you’re going to stick with Canada, might I recommend a well-written update on alternate oil extraction relative to oil prices or at least an in-depth hockey season preview.
- + Hey- there it is… negative news: Intel cutting sales outlook. +1 to Reuters for being so bold as to buck the trend. I see Google thought it worthy of the #6 slot, although it disappeared 15 minutes later in favor of CBS/Bloomberg’s “Labor Market Strengthens Bernanke's Case for More Easing”. Maybe Google just doesn’t like Intel’s foray into the mobile wars.
Given the 2012 domestic equity mutual fund flows (courtesy ZH); it appears at least a few people have decided not to be led to the slaughterhouse.
Was it Ben or Freddie who sang “The Show Must Go On”?
