# Financial Media What bothers Us



## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

Whether it is talking heads, news letters, columns or whatever what sayings, comments or things that bugs you about the financial media.

Buy low has to be number one. If you buy low and it goes much lower then the media will say you should have protected your money. If you don't buy low they say why on earth didn't people buy when it was low and cheap. A news letter will say why did people not buy stock A at that stupid low price or why on earth did people sell at that stupid low price. If stock A kept dropping they would say why on earth did the people go against the trend.

Don't buy high buy on sale could be number 2. If a stock keeps going higher beyond reason and you don't buy they say you should have stayed with the trend.

Stupid reasons and explanations has to be another one. Today I heard gold fell like a rock because China growth came in at 7.7 instead of 8 percent. Come on that is a completely stupid explanation for the drop. If China would have came in at 8.3 percent and gold dropped the reason would have been that China wouldn't need stimulus. The real reason is that everyone is selling and selling feeds selling and that is about it. If gold goes back to $1,900 from here then everyone who sold were idiots and all who didn't buy were idiots for not grabbing it on sale. The reality at this moment is your an idiot if you are holding it.

Stocks are very high and I don't hear many in the media saying it is to high and you should wait for far cheaper prices. If however it does crash then you will hear them say why did those idiots buy the highs and not wait for the sale and if it goes far lower then they say why didn't you protect your money. 

I know it is noise but get it off your back and tell us the stuff that bothers you. If anything it is fun to do.


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## Echo (Apr 1, 2011)

"Time to lock in your mortgage" - every month for the past 6 years.


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## Soils4Peace (Mar 14, 2010)

I learn from John De Goey. I listen to CEOs. The rest is comedy. I enjoy it, but have no trouble switching off either.


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## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

Time to lock in your mortgage is a classic and goes on far beyond 6 years. The time to lock in your mortgage is when you can see in hindsight that you should have done it when they were so low.


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## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

I almost forgot to mention doublespeak. News letter writers are famous for this.

I could say the S&P is in an uptrend and will go much higher from here maybe even 1900 by year end. However in my work I could see a turn here that could see the S&P at 1050 by November as the Fed works things out.

Fast forward to November and the S&P is close to 1050 then you will hear the same newsletter writer say I warned in my April newsletter that we could see this level in November and we have. You see if you had this newsletter you would have been warned and avoided the loss.


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## doctrine (Sep 30, 2011)

My favorite is people who advocate a stock but then sell it a month later, but don't tell anyone until the next time they are on "oh I recommended that but I sold a month later at $x price higher than I bought it..too bad for everyone else". Of course no one has any idea when they actually bought or sold. For all you know, they were advocating buying it because they were selling it and wanted a higher price.


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## valueindexer (Jun 17, 2011)

I know their job is to get attention, not to educate people, so it doesn't bother me and I rarely pay attention. But last week I slipped up and read a few articles and I was impressed by one in the Globe and Mail's "investment ideas" section. The author admitted that a stock he recommended a few months ago was a terrible pick (it turned out to be a fraud but there were some red flags back then) and it lost readers a lot of money. It was surprising because he actually showed that not all stock picks turn out well. Of course he went on to write a piece a month later about a stock that will probably go up by 10x this year...

If this ever starts to bother me I'll just take the other side of those trades and enjoy it.


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## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

Or quite often doctrine you will see them recommend stocks and the thing is sky high to the point where you could be the last one in. I think they recommend it this way because it is in an uptrend and will probably go higher in the short term which is what most people think in. 

Vaueindexer the stock will go up 10x in our dreams. Most of the time the company disappoints and does nothing except for the initial boost of being in the article. Many small companies have to go up when news writers pump them as all their readers pump their money into it.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

What bothers me about the financial media is that they're useless; they basically do no investigative journalism. There's no critical work. Bloomberg used to do some but that lasted until about 2010, and then they lost their edge too. Remember that Bloomberg actually used Freedom of Information, and sued the Federal Reserve for bailout details... it went all the way to the Supreme Court. That's the last time any journalism outfit went after the hard story.

All you ever see in the financial newspapers magazines etc are regurgitated corporate press releases. The "journalists" get a press release from a company, and that forms the backbone of their story. Stories like "Suncor begins work on new (whatever) project". There's no substance in the stories, it all just comes from corporate marketing.

The rest of the stories come from shills in the fund industry. Mutual fund salespeople and the like... how to dollar cost average, how to do foreign investment. I don't need to go to a news source to hear the same dribble I hear from fund salesmen. Again, it's not NEWS.

There's a lot missing. In Canada, I don't read any critical financial journalism. We have a situation where government & Bank of Canada funded significant bank bailouts back in 2009, yet nobody ever ran a proper story on it! These journalists are NOT doing their jobs. I didn't hear about it until the Centre for Policy Alternatives published this research piece.

There's enough material in there for 50 to 100 very critical newspaper pieces. We didn't get anything published in Canada! Where the hell are all these journalism grads. What exactly are they doing all day?


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

More gripes about the financial media. They obviously lack any kind of accounting backgrounds. If journalists had any basic accounting skills, they could start tearing apart companies and funds all over the place for suspicious, semi-fraudulent activities.

Where are the stories on securities lending and its implicit fraud?
Where are the stories on misrepresentation of fund yields due to ROC?
Where are the stories on the conflict of interest of people in charge of the CMHC, including the audit committee (consisting of property developers & speculators)

There are SO many issues out there. Nobody is bothering to report on them. These stories don't even take very long to discover... it just shows a complete lack of interest, or skill, or competence among the journalists.

Someone please go and write a story about the CMHC conflict of interest


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

Echo said:


> "Time to lock in your mortgage" - every month for the past 6 years.


"Real estate is going to crash" - Garth Turner every day for the last 15 years.


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## Echo (Apr 1, 2011)

Four Pillars said:


> "Real estate is going to crash" - Garth Turner every day for the last 15 years.


Haha, indeed.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

My number one would be how they suggest causation when they have no idea. They have this overriding need to explain why things are happening, perhaps to feign knowledge of the subject matter. Smart people realize that the markets are complex and nice stories do not necessarily explain anything...


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## blin10 (Jun 27, 2011)

andrewf said:


> My number one would be how they suggest causation when they have no idea. *They have this overriding need to explain why things are happening,* perhaps to feign knowledge of the subject matter. Smart people realize that the markets are complex and nice stories do not necessarily explain anything...


totally agree, I laugh when they try to explain why market tanked or gained 200 points, it's comedy...


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

One expert comes on and uses statistics and theories for gold going down.

The next expert comes on and uses statistics and theories for gold going up.

Equities.........same thing. 

Small wonder people are confused and parking their money in Treasuries, bonds, and GICs. 

There is no consensus because nobody really knows what is going on in the new world of staggering government debt, sustained central bank intervention, high frequency trading, concentrated pools of massive amounts of pension and private capital, investor/shareholder interference in day to day operations of corporations, bailouts, and bailins (which isn't even a word apparently.......according to my spell checker)

Corporate fundamentals do mean something..........sometimes..........and sometimes not.

A few years ago, if a "scenario" was discussed involving massive amounts of money printing, everyone would have agreed it would lead to massive deflation of the currency and wild inflation. The price of gold, they would have agreed, would go through the roof.

Hasn't happened................so much for past economic theory.

The world of finance is a rudderless ship, twisting and floundering in a sea of turmoil.

Those who make money have guessed right. Those who lost money guessed wrong.


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## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

sags said:


> A few years ago, if a "scenario" was discussed involving massive amounts of money printing, everyone would have agreed it would lead to massive deflation of the currency and wild inflation. The price of gold, they would have agreed, would go through the roof.
> 
> Hasn't happened................so much for past economic theory.


i think the simple answer is that so far bernanke has been proved completely correct ... money printing has a) prevented a massive deflationary depression and b) hasn't created the runaway inflation that has been predicted by many ... those that bought gold to hedge against inflation are simply wrong and have made a bad bet, a bet that has proven particularly painful since gold doesn't even yield anything unless it's a producer who pays dividends and they have fared worse than gold itself

let's face the fact the bernanke has played this thing really well, we are nudging toward a recovery without serious inflation

indeed the pull toward deflation is still very strong as the last few days have demonstrated


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Yeah, I'm really amazed at the anger and venom directed toward Bernanke, who seems to be doing a pretty good job in a tough situation. I think that, if anything, he has been too cautious with QE. They should have been more aggressive since the onset. Japan now seems to have a government that is serious about resetting inflation expectations. They took just about 20 years to get it, and still there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about QE there.


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

blin10 said:


> totally agree, I laugh when they try to explain why market tanked or gained 200 points, it's comedy...


Ha - I was thinking the same thing.

"..the market moved sideways today in response to the balance between uncertainty about QE2 and the news in Europe. Worries about gold could add a negative impact in the future".

blah, blah blah...


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## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

andrewf said:


> Yeah, I'm really amazed at the anger and venom directed toward Bernanke, who seems to be doing a pretty good job in a tough situation. I think that, if anything, he has been too cautious with QE. They should have been more aggressive since the onset. Japan now seems to have a government that is serious about resetting inflation expectations. They took just about 20 years to get it, and still there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about QE there.


i am not an economist but i would tend to disagree (but only mildly), runaway inflation has a destructive quality that is pretty frightening to behold, i think that bernanke has been rightfully very afraid of dropping too much money because inflation has a way of going underground and then appearing out of nowhere (which is what gold bugs will tell you to no end and i think they are right) and i think bernanke is erring on the side of caution but yes, perhaps another 25% would have been merited but it's only easy to see that in hindsight


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## jcgd (Oct 30, 2011)

I dunno. I'll tell you how this QE faired in 40 years when we see if they ever (or start to) get out from under the debt. I don't really understand what the long term goal is. The debt levels are still high, nobody is defaulting, and the credit cycle hasn't had a chance to reset. 

I suppose 20 years of going nowhere is better than a bad recession or even depression, but look at Japan. Still hardly moving.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Ah yes the debt................

To be paid by future generations of fewer workers.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

jcgd said:


> I dunno. I'll tell you how this QE faired in 40 years when we see if they ever (or start to) get out from under the debt. I don't really understand what the long term goal is. The debt levels are still high, nobody is defaulting, and the credit cycle hasn't had a chance to reset.
> 
> I suppose 20 years of going nowhere is better than a bad recession or even depression, but look at Japan. Still hardly moving.


Default is one way, financial repression is another--either way creditors take a hit.


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

Two things jump to mind.

The first is the "one size fits all" way that most articles are written. I understand that there may not be room to print all the variations unless it becomes a series of articles but at least an acknowledgement that there are some assumptions or possible variations would help.


The second is that the article is typically written implying there has been some effort as well as research by the writer. When I challenged an article that basically was a re-hash of an Industry Canada report, the response was "us over-worked journalists don't have time to figure out the assumptions built into the study". 

Problem was the assumptions resulted in the article stating the cheapest bank account cost $36 a year where I had the same bank account and at that point had paid something like an average of $0.75 per year. Worse - it took careful reading of over forty slides to find the fine print that listed the assumption, with no mention in the preceeding slides that there were assumptions made. Industry Canada responded that they thought that the assumptions were clear but I noticed the following year's report listed on slide number two the assumptions made.


Cheers


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

Amazing how the markets had a blip today after the Associated Press had their twitter account hacked.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/glob...ed-twitter-feed-roils-market/article11512795/


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## Retired Peasant (Apr 22, 2013)

One thing that grates on my nerves is 'we'll tell you what you need to know'. Who the bleep are they to tell ME what I 'need' to know, and it's not just financial media. As though we're all too stupid to understand anything.

A minor one is 'at the end of the day' - it's become the phrase of the decade - way overused.


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## donald (Apr 18, 2011)

"why 2.5 million is not enough for retirement" economist/personal finance expert/blogger whoever john doe states ect ect........I can't stand that.......I also hate ''some''(not all!) of these personal finance journo's----When i read that bullsh^t i think to myself ''lets see your net-worth?''Do you do as you say,(lets see your finance and balance sheet)i hate reading articles were the ''tone'' is one of ''teacher'' and ''pupil".......what are they proving writing this crap(can they judge there readership?.......make the avg canadian feel like sh^t?And the people that do have millions are WAY past ''learning'' or needing advice from some so called guru....m.o.

Once a mth i see a article like this.(it's not that i disagree but the reality,5% of the population is lucky to have liquid assets in the 7 digits-most people are A typical middle class and that includes not having millions.


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## nakedput (Jan 2, 2013)

cannot stand the existence of perma-bears (guys like peter schiff, marc faber, nouriel roubini) or perma-bulls. Why even have some of these 'guru's' on to give insight when you know 100% what their answer will be.


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## Feruk (Aug 15, 2012)

"This program on BNN (or wherever) is for entertainment only, do your own research or consult a qualified financial advisor before doing any investing." HUH?? So the guy on TV who invests millions of dollars of people's money is not qualified?? I am more qualified? What the fuk? Why am I watching this guy?


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## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

Feruk I suppose they have to say that in case some idiot does exactly what they say and then blame them when it doesn't work. I find a lot of what they say is like diversify and all that crap is like the hockey player interview where the interviewer asks what do you need to do in the third period? The player replies that we need to work harder, take more shots and get a few more goals.


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## Barwelle (Feb 23, 2011)

Here's a take on the media's influence:


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