Hi Guys,
I am prompted to submit this post by the amazing MFO membership reaction to the CNBC viewership demise story. Roughly north of 570 members have already participated. A natural question rises from that observation: What are our financial viewership habits?
Warning! Warning! This is a survey alert.
On average, how many minutes per business day do you spend watching or listening to stock market reports?
Wait. That investment question is not properly posed. Better is: On average, how many hours or fractions thereof per business day do you spend watching or listening to stock market reports?
The specification of the timeframe scale is a pertinent parameter in the survey question’s formulation. We handle and comprehend small numbers much more effectively than we absorb and interpret larger numbers. It is easy for us to appreciate the 59 minute time difference between one minute and one hour. It is far more challenging to comprehend the time lapse disparity between the 525,600 minutes in one regular year and its 8768 hourly equivalently. Large numbers and the processing of these numbers cause us some mental pain.
My answer to the question is a firm and absolute Zero hours.
I consider these information formats as a total waste of time. That judgment is mostly anchored by my investment philosophy and style. I am a long-term investor who only trades once or twice a year. If I were a day trader with a policy to be market neutral at the close of each trading day, my reply would be completely reversed; I would be glued to the pricing fluctuations. Since I am not a member of that high risk cohort, the random minute-to-minute pricing shocks are merely white noise to me.
I would be very surprised if your estimated hourly viewing is substantially larger than my commitment. Since you folks are regulars on a mutual fund website and that tells a lot about your investment program, it is highly unlikely that you day trade frequently. Mutual funds are the wrong vehicle for such actions. I recognize that some of you manage a mixed portfolio that includes individual stocks and ETF holdings. Certainly you will trade more often and will devote some viewing time each day to financial matters.
So let us know some measure of your investment time commitment. There are no right and no wrong answers. It is what it is.
Keep in mind that I will not interpret your replies in terms of a 24 hour day. I will subtract 7 hours for sleeping, 1 hour total for both breakfast and lunch, and an additional hour for dinner. So the denominator in my calculation will be 15 hours and not 24.
If you watch CNBC, Bloomberg, or even Fox Business for 3 hours daily, that task is consuming 20 % of your free optional hours. Is the information gained worth that time sink?
My answer is “No”, but I understand that it depends on your investment philosophy, time horizon, and goals.
Please respond.
By the way, the results from this survey will not be statistically meaningful. Many of the replies will not be representative of the entire MFO population. I recognize that the manner that I proposed the question influenced to some unknown degree the number and the types of replies. Hence, the survey’s findings will be distorted by biases and prejudices that I did not attempt to eliminate by its design. Those MFO members who contribute to Board exchanges are a small fraction of the entire MFO population.
Still respond; perhaps just for the fun of critiquing the survey’s faulty formulation. A solid survey is hard to construct, and flawed surveys can do considerable harm. That’s not the case in this instance, since our survey will be quickly discarded to the dust bin of history.
Best Regards.
Comments
I watch the market, not the news.
Or as Simon and Garfunkel sang -
“Ohh, I can gather all the news I need on the weather report”
And Rolf Dobelli recently said, “The more “news factoids” you digest, the less
of the big picture you will understand. If information leads to higher economic success,
we’d expect journalists to be at the top of the pyramid. That’s not the case.”
To glean:
verb (used with object)
1. to gather slowly and laboriously, bit by bit.
2. to learn, discover, or find out, usually little by little or slowly.
verb (used without object)
4. to collect or gather anything little by little or slowly.
MJG noted: The topic of business news via tv or radio or Youtube; as described "how many hours or fractions thereof per business day do you spend watching or listening to stock market reports?" is the narrow focus of the post.
If one is attempting to understand the vast nature of investments; and chooses to exclude watching video or audio format; then this format (MFO) may as well be skipped too, and one should hire an advisor or buy laddered CD's and get on with the remainder of the precious hours of a day that are gone forever, once spent. Forget any format for learning a trinket of knowledge here or there; that may impact your portfolio's well-being.
Lastly, if one is able to gather all the knowledge they need to manage their portfolio in a positive fashion and exclude the areas of knowledge consideration in the original post; you are light years ahead of this house's abilities. I prefer to "glean" in all formats as my time allows, and indeed; there is no right or wrong answer. I spent 1/2 hour of my precious day in consideration of thought and writing here.
Good Evening,
Catch
And, YIKES - What else do folk find of interest during the 9-5 period? I can only take so much C-Span. And, the daily cable "news" seems to consist of endless episodes of murder, rape, & other forms of inhumanity perpetuated by fellow humans against one another. Yes - the WSJ, NYT, and MFO are superior to the TV blabber - no doubt. But, still ... where's the harm in the other - as long as one keeps with their predetermined investment plan?
Oops - time to go tune-in to my daily "soap."
HERE'S A BETTER QUESTION: What do you find of value on TV in general? Former FCC Commissioner Milton Minnow in the 60s notoriously referred to commercial television as "a vast wasteland." Minnow's days are long past - but I'll submit that the wasteland he envisioned has grown even vaster and "wastier" in the intervening years. Enough said.
Us too.
"Vast wasteland" has been transformed into sterile desert.
Mona
Suze Orman will blind you with her whitened teeth while she chastises newbies. And Cramer is just a loud nutjob desperate for attention. I want to punch him after 5 minutes.
I am guilty of clicking on too many online articles, though. I guess that's how I prefer my dose of "noise".
I have a crush on Becky Quick, so if she's on, I'm committed
Rbrt
Need to get richer, not just older and wiser...