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Stock Market
- Thread starter Tigers of Old
- Start date
mb64 said:
How much of all this do you think is caused by the media these days and their infatuation for negative stories?
With so much information out there....if people keep hearing "recession", "meltdown", "record loss" on radio, TV, in newspapers, on the internet, etc...then I think that has a big say in people running around panicking and selling, and why we are seeing the drastic ups and (more) downs over the last few weeks.
Liverpool said:
You don't think the media has invested interest in pumping the stock market up Livers?
Media reporting has been like a yoyo.
Tigers of Old said:
No, I think the media would make their money from selling papers, getting people to watch their TV programs, advertising money from people hitting their webpage, etc and people buy/use this sort of stuff even more when there is a big negative 'doom and gloom' story to catch up on:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/top25-headlines.htm
Past stock market declines came and went because people back in the Depression days or in 1987 didn't have even half the access we have to opinions, feedback, and communication that we do now.
Today, as soon as there is some good news, it is quickly shot down on webpages, newspapers, internet on mobile phones with bad news about impending doom and gloom.
I think the media has had some bearing on the stock market fluctuations that we are seeing at the moment.
Liverpool said:
Disagree entirely.
The media make their money from advertising and when the market is falling the first thing to be cut form the major companies is advertising budgets.
Believe you me it's in the media's interests to see the market doing well, not poorly. It's no conspiracy.
Media reporting over last 3 weeks has been pretty funny, 'Black Monday, Happy Tuesday, Woeful Wednesday, Terrific Thursday, Frightful Friday, Yummy Monday, Terrible Tuesday' etc etc, etc.
Where is the scrutiny of Standard and Poors in all this? the so called, conservative, blue-ribbon, rock-solid institutional investment analysing body gave these lier loans the thumbs up, spawning everyone, and I mean everyone, to jump in. I blame them, but have they owned up? Have governments pinged 'em? Have they lost credibility? I don't see it.
Where is the scrutiny of Standard and Poors in all this? the so called, conservative, blue-ribbon, rock-solid institutional investment analysing body gave these lier loans the thumbs up, spawning everyone, and I mean everyone, to jump in. I blame them, but have they owned up? Have governments pinged 'em? Have they lost credibility? I don't see it.
Liverpool said:
As bad as media reporting is, it has had little impact on what's been happening here.
Maybe to institutions like banks ,invetsment houses ,and corporations,the media really dont influence their behaviour as they tend to look beyond the daily fluctuations in the stockmarket ,however I do think the average mum and dad investors ,do get spooked by the media talk.I'm not sure what % of the stock market mum and dads make up ,but I know it has siginificantly increased these past 10-15 years.
If the Mum and Dads are going to get spooked I reckon there's been enough to do it without any media hype. You're right that Mums and Dads are a bigger part of the market - not atypical at the top of frothy markets as everyone mistakes rising markets for investment skill. They tend not to be price makers though.
There is a long list of candidates to share accountability for this and I don't see media really have a place on it. Governments, regulators (the SEC and the FSA have not been worth a crumpet quite frankly), bank lending practices (I'm old enough to remember when they actually cared if you had a chance of paying loans back) and investment bankers who were too smart for themselves (although many will still be well ahead at the end of this - you don't have to pay back bonuses) would all be there, not necessarily in that order.
What we've seen should also be put in the context of the basic fact that markets get overbought and oversold - it's an immutable law of investment. There will always be booms and there will always be crashes. The problem with this one is it isn't just an asset price bubble, it involves the unwinding of huge amounts of inappropriate leverage. It has happened before but rarely (and history may yet show never) as badly as this and it's very nature means virtually no-one is untouched.
Other crashes have been effectively countered with big cuts in interest rates but those don't work when no-one's lending. This will take a while to pull out of and when we do things aren't going to look quite the same.
Whilst the standard of media reporting is unquestionably awful, blaming them in any material way for this misses the point really.
There is a long list of candidates to share accountability for this and I don't see media really have a place on it. Governments, regulators (the SEC and the FSA have not been worth a crumpet quite frankly), bank lending practices (I'm old enough to remember when they actually cared if you had a chance of paying loans back) and investment bankers who were too smart for themselves (although many will still be well ahead at the end of this - you don't have to pay back bonuses) would all be there, not necessarily in that order.
What we've seen should also be put in the context of the basic fact that markets get overbought and oversold - it's an immutable law of investment. There will always be booms and there will always be crashes. The problem with this one is it isn't just an asset price bubble, it involves the unwinding of huge amounts of inappropriate leverage. It has happened before but rarely (and history may yet show never) as badly as this and it's very nature means virtually no-one is untouched.
Other crashes have been effectively countered with big cuts in interest rates but those don't work when no-one's lending. This will take a while to pull out of and when we do things aren't going to look quite the same.
Whilst the standard of media reporting is unquestionably awful, blaming them in any material way for this misses the point really.
I'm not interested in the stock market so haven't followed this closely but I just got a bank statement for a modest managed trust and found it's almost halved in value since the last quarterly balance. Gee some people must be losing a bit of sleep at the moment.
