Have consumers decided most news is fake news?

[FakeNews]

Skepticism toward the media is most often associated with conservatives in Middle America, some of whom eat something other than artisanal sandwiches. But this week brings more evidence that investors worldwide have become very reluctant to buy what many established news organizations are selling. How else to explain the collective shrug of the shoulders in financial markets to the latest breathless media reports about alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia?

Such reports have dominated this week’s news as much of the professional commentariat has pondered out loud whether treason has been committed in the President’s inner circle. Yet after an ever-so-slight hiccup on Tuesday following Donald Trump Jr.’s release of emails regarding a meeting he took last June with a Russian lawyer, stocks drifted higher. Since then, investors have spent much of their time parsing the remarks of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. Reassured by her questionable suggestion that interest rates won’t have to rise very fast or very far in the years ahead, they continue to keep market indexes near record levels.

Investors in the aggregate obviously don’t believe that the republic is coming to an end, nor do they seem to expect a wrenching change in U.S. leadership. There have been similar episodes over the last several months of sharp divergence between the collective analytical judgment of journalists and that of investors. This era of reported turmoil has been marked by a striking lack of volatility in the financial markets. Stocks aren’t cheap by historical standards and corrections do happen.

Yet the world’s investors still like U.S. equities, despite constant media reports that U.S. constitutional governance is hanging in the balance. Now let’s look at the general population in the U.S. A new report from the Pew Research Center also suggests that the news media’s credibility problem reaches well beyond the hard-core MAGA crowd. A full 85% of Republicans and those who lean Republican have a negative view of the national news media. And even among Democrats and those who lean Democratic, the press corps is underwater, with 46% holding a negative view compared to 44% holding a positive one.

While investors may be unnerved to learn how many political operators of both parties seem eager to glean opposition research from Russian sources, they apparently still don’t see it as a threat to American prosperity, or the rule of law on which it depends.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/have-consumers-decided-most-news-is-fake-news-1499889881

 

[Colonel Hogan]

The stock market indexes -- ALL of them -- are their own form of "fake news." They are a proven unreliable measure of the ACTUAL state of an economy, and are instead a measure of a mere point in time of individual corporate valuations.

And they are least of all an indication of the credibility of news media reports generally or what most people "believe" about those reports.

On a scale of 1 to 10 for a "good try," that wasn't even a 2.

 

[Que]

The stock market indexes -- ALL of them -- are their own form of "fake news." They are a proven unreliable measure of the ACTUAL state of an economy, and are instead a measure of a mere point in time of individual corporate valuations.

And they are least of all an indication of the credibility of news media reports generally or what most people "believe" about those reports.

On a scale of 1 to 10 for a "good try," that wasn't even a 2.

I more or less agree, but the word "valuation" stuck out at me. You are correct if my valuation you mean the market valuation of the corporation it's just that when I see that word I tend to think in terms of the value of it net assets, or the value of its anticipated income stream. the stock market is more a reflection of what investors think those values maybe in the future and have very little to do with what the actual, measurable value is now.

I know that you know all that but I just felt like clarifying a bit. I think stock market indexes reflect investor whimsy as well as what other alternatives investors have as much as anything else.

If I had a lot of idle money around that I felt like having tracked I would put it in a short sale of Tesla stock.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

I more or less agree, but the word "valuation" stuck out at me. You are correct if my valuation you mean the market valuation of the corporation it's just that when I see that word I tend to think in terms of the value of it net assets, or the value of its anticipated income stream. the stock market is more a reflection of what investors think those values maybe in the future and have very little to do with what the actual, measurable value is now.

I know that you know all that but I just felt like clarifying a bit. I think stock market indexes reflect investor whimsy as well as what other alternatives investors have as much as anything else.

If I had a lot of idle money around that I felt like having tracked I would put it in a short sale of Tesla stock.

Yeah, I was going to mention the role of the indexes as an expression of investors' faith in the economic future, but let that slide. You are correct to clarify. Thanks.