CNBC, We Forgive You

It was last Friday, the final day of a mediocre trading week.  Unfortunately, we violated one of our rules, i.e., watch CNBC for the ticker but keep the Mute button on.  Not just so we won't hear the ramblings of Jim Cramer, the supposed nemesis of closed-caption typists everywhere.

No, the reason was that CNBC was in the full-on position of doom-and-glooming the market.  This is the original hot and cold network.  When the market is galloping upwards, bring out the CNBC cheerleaders (remember the Dow 10,000 hats everyone there wore as the average approached that level?

But when the market slows or goes down, bring out Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom Boom Doob newsletter.  Bring out the guys from the Big Brokers or the Big Hedge Funds and have them opine that "a 10% correction is healthy for the market."  Who knew that brokers sometimes said, in public, that it was good for us to lose money?

The biggest time-waster on CNBC is the reporting on futures trading.  All kinds of stocks and options can be traded before the market even opens, mostly by professionals but anyone can do it.  Last Friday the futures were down about 40 Dow points and they "recovered" to up about 24.  Bring out the panic-provokes!

History shows that the market improved steadily during the day, the Dow finally closing up 1.13% or 185.66 points.

So why the emphasis on the premarket futures?  Here's why:  We forget the gentleman's full name, but

Red Barber at Ebbets Field.  We think that is
Alan to his left

remember the first name:  Alan.  He was one of the first statisticians to help baseball announcers on tv and radio;  the one being helped by Alan was Red Barber.  Alan continually fed great numbers of numbers to Red, many meaningless.  ("This is the third base on balls a right-hander Dodger threw in the last five games held at night," etc.).  Everyone, it seems to the media, is obsessed with numbers.  Numbers Up.  Numbers Down.  But give me numbers!

We ask you to watch CNBC for any 15 minutes today, with the sound on.  You will no doubt hear that "the Dow is down for the eighth time in twelve sessions," or "this stock has missed earnings estimates in three of the past four quarters."  Pretty meaningless numbers, we believe.  Getting back to the emphasis on premarket futures:  tv nature abhors a numbers vacuum, so why wait until the market opens to tell you what the market is (or will be) doing.

Idle chatter designed to make teleprompter readers look smart.  The real smarts go to the people using the mute button.