Most financial news, outside of Bloomberg and The Financial Times, can only be described as extraordinarily poor. It is generally written for the casual reader and as such is tied to sound bites or headlines prone to hyperbole. Markets are either ” crashing” or “soaring”, and the level of analysis is cursory at best. This is to be expected in an environment where technology has progressed to such a degree that we can get a read on peoples immediate thoughts however illogical or ill conceived. That’s the world we live in and we must adjust, but when it comes down to making real fundamental decisions, this type of “news” runs counter to what we as investors should pay attention to, much less act on.
It is our opinion that this ” real time” financial mentality has only added to the overall noise level that existed prior to twitter and Facebook. The question becomes: has this increased din made it more or less difficult to effectively manage a portfolio with a purely fundamental perspective? We would argue the point that, while it has become more difficult to sift through the noise simply due to the additional volumes, the frequency and incessant nature of this noise ensures that true value players will have more opportunity sets.
The Informed Contrarian 