Headlines You Won't See In The Media

Bad news sells. Newspapers know that, which is why the headlines can be so darn depressing.
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I despair at the financial media in particular at the moment. The shouty and scary and overhyped nature of the so-called “news” headlines correlates exactly with the crisis in their business model.

​People’s attention is spread thinner and thinner, which means they have to hype the news harder and harder to attract eyeballs.

Now if I was running a financial media organisation, it would be different.

Here’s some of my headlines.

1. The best advice we can give you is to spend less than you earn and do something sensible with the difference
2. Our advertisers pay us to provide “news” that enriches their bottom line at the expense of yours.
3. What happened in the markets yesterday really is irrelevant, so I’m not sure why we devote so much time to it.
4. Our “experts” are no more accurate in their predictions than you are.
5. We don’t have a clue where the market is headed in the short-term and neither does anyone else.
6. When you trade shares, it’s likely you’ll be competing with someone better researched and better resourced than you are. Good luck!
7. Other than the thrill of the hunt, it makes little sense for the average investor to buy individual shares.
8. Even if it did, we have no reliable way to identify which shares that will outperform in the future (if I did, I wouldn’t need to work for this newspaper!)
9. Overweighting your portfolio in gold doesn’t make much sense either, even if you are really scared.
10. If bouncing in and out of the market made sense, professional managers would not have such a terrible track record.
11. You’d be better off not watching or reading us.

How long do you think I’d last?

​I don’t think I’ll be give up my day job!!

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