What's lacking in the financial press?
First-time poster, long-time lurker here. Obviously, there's lots of smart folks on here who are most likely avid consumers of financial news - whether it's the FT, WSJ, CNBC, trade rags or whatever. What do you find missing in their coverage?
God - where do you even start? CNBC is basically a bunch of personalities, talking their book and at their worst a pseudo political talk show - with stock tips intermixed with bickering. Like I'd imagine the view would be if they took a five minute break to talk about their hot stock tips. It's somewhat entertaining - but garbage as a 'financial news' source. It's a caricature of itself.
Bloomberg is better and I think they do a decent job of keeping it 'objective' (within reason that is ) giving you actual market news/commentary. Their guests tend to be far more boring, but generally more informative than CNBC. FT I find much the same way and I appreciate the more global perspective - that's normally what I'd pick up if given a selection.
You want to know what's missing? Saying 'bond yields end down 10 basis points - 10 yr at X, 30 yr at Y' not 'BOND YIELDS CRASH TO NEAR GENERATIONAL LOWS ON FEARS OF CHINA SABER RATTLING AND COVID RESURGENCE AS THE FLIGHT TO SAFETY TRADE IS BACK ON' - when that is followed the next day by the absolute opposite headline.
I'm staying away from a general rant on the whole news cycle and ecosystem, but suffice it to say there's far too much opinion and far too little actual perspective on what is happening.
Interesting observation. Certainly a lot of opinion can creep into the news. When sites try to do "analyses," in your viewpoint does that slip into opinion? Sometimes it seems there's a fine line between analyzing the impact of certain events (e.g. what's the knock-on effect of X, Y, and Z events beyond a "just the facts" article).
I have found at my shop that PMs and the like will prefer to stick to rather niche (and very expensive) publications on their subject area - IE private debt people reading the aptly titled "Private debt investor" publication
good comms
Interesting observation. Is there an importance to keep the broader public aware of what's going on in the "nichier" areas, like private debt? The biggest observation about that one seems to be story after story is "direct lenders are now taking on banks!" which has been the case for a while, IMO. What is your opinion of the trade ecosystem?
Following. Curious peoples thoughts on this and working on trying to optimize this myself. Personally, I think a lot of general financial news is garbage. I might read it on the weekend to know what’s happening, but I don’t follow it closely. A lot of it is backwards looking, widely known and noise IMO. Headlines are always something absolutely ridiculous like SP500 “threatening” a 0.3% decline, 30 year yield up “1 bp,” or markets post largest decline in “8 days.” Financial press essentially turns noise into news. Bloomberg is the best IMO, but can be dry (as financial news should be). Every once in awhile WSJ/BBG will post a well researched article that forces me to think about the implications to the names I cover or to do further research (ie guinea coup > aluminum price > beverage names > off premise channel packaging relies more aluminum cans > any implications or any names better positioned?).
Usually I just watch the live company news on Bloomberg terminal for all my names and click on stuff that catches my eye. A lot of times the random news sources post some interesting stuff.
Why does anyone here expect to learn something important (valuable) from some dumbass on TV? Beside breaking news, I mean. It’s just talking heads blathering. Or money managers talking up their book.
Earned insights.
Removed
I pretty much just read Matt Levine now.
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