The communication innovations we have around us today just like the internet, financial newspapers, and special interest television channels centered on investing like CNBC certainly are a high speed pipeline of nonsensical chatter. All these sources of information mean that there is absolutely no shortage of media people trying to answer our questions about the stock market and specific stocks. You need to remember that the news headlines media are constantly competing to survive against other stuff you can watch. If they don't always sound like they know what is going on you then won't watch their presentations. Unless you tune to their show then their ratings decrease. If their ratings go down they get fired and their show gets cancelled.

Which means that financial journalists are in the business enterprise of finding great stories and sounding like authorities no matter what. The stock market is a wonderful place for them to dig up news 'scoops' to feed to the public. They don't really really check their facts perfectly and sometimes never. Therefore if some insider wants to feed you a line of bull manure then all they have to do is maintain good connections with financial journalists, sponsor an investment show, or outright buy an investing TV channel like Jack Welch the CEO of GE did when he set up CNBC. What a smart way for inside executives to control the flow of news information to the public then to actually own one of the only financial news channels...however, not so great for you!
These journalists also kick up the fire by attracting so-called 'experts' to talk about each side of some topic that real experts wouldn't normally consider important.
This just makes it even more confusing for the public to understand what is important when selling or buying a stock. Shows on CNBC like 'Closing Bell', 'Kudlow & Company', and 'Mad Money' do nothing but confuse and misdirect the eye of all individual investors in the public. Even worse therefore the financial news media allows overpriced stocks to be recommended through analysts in the inside web that inside executives are dumping on the public because they are trying to get out. This actually happened at the top of the bull market in 1999. For an excellent historical description of what happened read Maggie Mahar's book entitled "Bull."

The famous Yale University Economist, Prof. Bob Shiller, Ph.D. is particularly harsh on the media in his book "Irrational Exuberance." Dr. Shiller is one the economists that Alan Greenspan respects most and where he got the term "Irrational Exuberance." He portrays the media as sound-bite-driven where superficial opinions are preferred over in-depth analyses. I agree whole heartedly with him and contend that it is also done just because the industry would prefer to have the retail investor confused and emotionally pliable to make you buy and sell if they want with total disregard for the best interests!

Individuals who had invested their life savings in the currency markets were cheated in the stock market as the financial press and analysts were hyping up just what a great buy stocks were towards the top of the marketplace in 1999 and 2000. Concurrently inside corporate executives were selling out everything they had. What is amazing is our federal government by means of the Security Exchange Commission never did a thing about it. There is never a blanket case taken or an outcry that the vast majority of the inside executives had somehow magically sold-out of the market six months before the market crashed.

Here is festival want you to consider: if you are a beginner investor it's important you don't WATCH THE FINANCIAL NEWS OR READ THE FINANCIAL NEWSPAPERS! Don't allow the currency markets industry lead you around by the nose like livestock to the slaughter house. Don't listen to what they want one to listen to. You should concentrate on learning the most important thing in the stock market and the mass media will only confuse you until you have educated yourself.
Recommended reading:
1. Mahar, M. Bull! A History of the Boom, 1929-1999 (NY, HarperBusiness , 2003)

2. Shiller, R., Irrational Exhuberance, (NY, Broadway Books, 2000)