Often, we’ll hear from clients about articles in the media on market and economic topics, which we find to be wildly wrong, nonsensical, or speculative at best. This post is a reminder that journalists are not economists; they are not equity or fixed income analysts; and they rarely report in an unbiased way.
The elements of good financial reporting include:
- the facts, ma’am, definitely the facts, from verifiable sources
- reasonable grounding in basic economic theory such as supply and demand, social goods, pricing theories and so forth
- lack of bias, examination of several points of view
Some sources we like for financial news include:
- Reuters, market section http://www.reuters.com/finance/markets
- Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/markets
- St Louis Federal Reseve for data https://fred.stlouisfed.org/
- The Wall Street Journal
- Some subscription services such as Value Line, Morningstar, and The Economist can be good sources of more specific information, such as company reports, global economic trends, and so forth
- Barron’s
This is by no means a complete list, but these sources will get you started!