I just finished watching ‘Bulls & Bears‘ and couldn’t believe the nonsense I was hearing. First they characterized this recent drop as being on terrorism fears. They mentioned oil and Friday’s horrible jobs report as if they were just minor influences. It seemed pretty clear to me that the market basically shook off the terror concerns, then got shaken around by that Yukos head-fake, and then fell apart on the jobs numbers. Now I’m sure that those terror threats were (are) still weighing on people’s minds but to gloss over those other issues is irresponsible IMHO.
What really got me during this segment was that Gary B. Smith drew some ridiculous trend channel on the NASDAQ, which had the index closing at the bottom of that channel on Friday. He then proceeded to call that chart a buy. Here’s the channel that he drew:
That line may become the new bottom of the channel if the NASDAQ turns on a dime but it’s premature to make that call. But the larger issue I have is that Gary called the chart a buy right here. How he, Mr. ‘buy-strong-stocks-that-are-getting-stronger’, could call a down-trending index a buy is beyond me. Things really got bizarre when, later in the show, he showed an almost identical situation on the chart of Merrill Lynch (MER) and advised to stay away because it was weak and could get a lot weaker. Huh?
I’m amazed that these stuffed shirts can make calls like this and then say “it was terror concerns” or some other nonesense if they are wrong. C’mon, these guys are wrong more often then the weather men on the nightly news and they get paid ridiculous sums of money.
I think Gary admitted in his column a while ago that some of the antics on TV are mainly “artificially” created drama to create/maintain interest in the show. I am surprised folks aren’t paying much attention to the worsening economy. I guess if the White House and Greenie say the economy is fine, strong, and robustly recovering enough times, people tend to believe it until the bitter end…?
I find Fox’s political news coverage completely biased and limited. If thier political coverage is that biased, I can’t trust thier business coverage.
Since they are such stauch Bush supporters, I have not doubt they would glaze over any economic coverage that would shed a negative light on the current administration.
This is not the kind of news coverage I need as an active trader. I need the straight dope, something I learned a long time ago I can’t get from Fox.