Brian Wesbury says there are too
many bears on the telly; Barry Ritholtz says there are
many bulls. I don’t watch TV, so I can’t say. I read the financial press,
and lots of blogs. And I see there a definite bearish bias. It seems likely,
at least, that financial newspapers and blogs are significantly more bearish
than financial television. If that’s the case, why would it be?
A few ideas:
- Financial TV tries to make the markets exciting. The way it does so is by
turning them into a game, where we win when stocks go up, and lose when stocks
go down. This naturally creates a bullish bias.
- Financial TV likes to feature experts, as ratified by the market. That means
economists and analysts from the sell side, as well as corporate executives.
It’s well known that sell-side analysts have a bullish bias. Executives, of
course, are going to be bullish on their own particular field. And sell-side
economists also tend to the bullish. The blogs and the financial press, on
the other hand, tend to feature the opinion of journalists and other observers
who don’t have a dog in the fight, which means that they lack the natural
bullish bias of the market participants.
- Journalists are naturally bearish. I’m not entirely sure why this is, but
I’m pretty sure it’s true. Maybe it’s because all the biggest financial stories
are about fraud or crashes or other meltdowns. Bull markets are generally
a long slow grind upwards; big drops can be much more spectacular. Why doesn’t
this rule carry over into TV? Partly because the pundits in print are journalists,
while the pundits on TV generally aren’t.
But since I don’t watch TV, I’m a very bad person to be speculating about all
this. Any CNBC-watchers out there who might be able to weigh in?