Thursday, June 06, 2013

Financial Journalism 101

Financial journalists are like NFL cornerbacks. They have a very short memory.

No matter what happens, they always have a facile explanation, and little to no concern if the explanation is logically consistent with the explanation for yesterday's events.

I read that the stock market decline yesterday was due to "preliminary bad jobs news" and "bracing for Friday's jobs report".

If the market had surged, it would have no doubt been because the bad news meant the Fed would not be ending its various asset buying programs (the "bad news is actually good news" gambit).

And people, if the market hadn't budged........??

That's right, investors had already "priced in" the news.

Nice work if you can get it and don't mind the smell.


2 comments:

Rolo Tomasi said...

Financial reporting is for people who couldn't hack it as sports reporters.

gcallah said...

When I worked in a financial company the actual traders thought these "explanations" were hilarious.