Has the Mainstream Media Engineered The Direction of the Stock Market
To say that the news media is completely one hundred percent responsible for any success and failure right in the stock market would be foolish. However, to say that they have no effect at all would also be foolish to another extent. The fact is that investors are watching the same news that we are, getting the same bad news and the same good news as well. And the market has proven that if there is bad news, people tend to panic.
Investors for better or for worse are in fact as human as you or me. The Federal Open Market Committee will be meeting tomorrow and obviously how that is framed, what is reported on, will have an effect, no matter what. The very notion of anyone in the government trying anything, when the market seems to be healing itself just a little bit, should be very worrying to investors. However, the long term ramifications for stocks is going to be even more worry, depending on how the media reports on it.
There have been the slightest whispers about "Great Depression Version 2.0" that should chill you to the bone, because it may turn out to be a self fulfilling prophecy. It may incite a panic that causes people to sell and thrash the market when it is beginning a turn around. Some investors know the game, and know to hang onto their stock options, through some rough patches, but many are fly by night investors who get squeamish at the slightest bit of bad news.
Many do have some kind of agenda, but what that agenda is varies. The stock market, the economy, all wrapped right into one, can be rather manipulated by the media. With the right "facts" being fed, people won't think and people will panic. The meeting of the feds tomorrow might bring doom as well and the media will place some hints that it could cause more troubles, it could destabilize the stock market, perhaps not directly saying it, which shall cause some investors to lose their sense and indirectly cause more problems for non-investors.
Stock Market Report 3/12/12
Mixed bag, as investors may be spinning their wheels until the meeting with the Fed, whether or not it will end up being good or better
Dow Jones: 12,959.56(+37.54)
Nasdaq: 2983.66(-4.46)
S and P 500: 1371.09(+0.22)
