Thursday, August 27, 2009

The Financial Media In A Nutshell

It is the same story but two vastly different headlines.

The story is Dell and their earnings after Thursday's market close.

The first headline comes from Bloomberg. See figure 1.

Figure 1. Bloomberg/ headline

The second comes from MarketWatch. See figure 2.

Figure 2. MarketWatch/ headline

I was surprised honestly as the Bloomberg headline is more bullish than MarketWatch; I would expect less cheerleading from Bloomberg. Furthermore, isn't the differences in the headlines reminiscent of the rally over the past 6 months where the markets rose on lowered expectations and cost cutting despite awful economic conditions?

Reading Bloomberg's headline suggests that Dell had a blowout quarter; MarketWatch's headline has a sense of dread to it especially since it is so big and bold. I guess it is how you spin it!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The media would like to believe it is above responding to its own incentives, but it is not. Their primary incentive is, "What will make more customers look at our product?" Then they add their personal biases about what they would like to believe.

The two outlets found they had different incentives today, I guess.

Anonymous said...

Everyone critiques the media. When they are bullish, bearish, behind the curve ... Do you really think investors bought Dell on the back of Bloomberg's comments? If you had bothered to look at their release you would have seen their margins. You cant those that in the dumb $, smart $ data