Saturday, December 13, 2008

Factoid of the Day - Gone to the Dogs

By now you may have heard of the latest web video sensation, the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam at Ustream.tv. It has just become the most viewed video stream of all time, with more than 18 million views, for a combined 790 viewer-years. Yup, that's right, according to NBC News web surfers have spent a combined 790 years watching puppies instead of, oh I don't know, working, doing homework...hey, aren't YOU supposed to be doing homework!

Monday, December 8, 2008

Interactive Media and the Stock Market's Volatility

It's been my opinion for a while that online trading and the increase in information available to stock traders has contributed to an increasingly volatile stock market.

Think about it for a second, before the rise in online trading, selling off your stocks required a call to your broker. Theoretically, your broker was someone who you trusted to know what he/she was doing when it came to buying and selling your stocks. More importantly, your broker (other than a brokerage fee) wasn't financially involved in the sale or purchase of your stocks.

There's a good chance that if you'd called your broker to sell your stocks during a downturn in the market, he'd tell you that now was not the time to sell off the stocks and lock in your losses, now was the time to buy more for the inevitable upswing in the market that follows any sell-off.

Unfortunately, for a large number of Americans, the broker is a thing of the past. There's very little standing in your way when you log into your E-Trade or ScottTrade account to sell off that stock that's tanking... meaning there's no one there to talk some sense into you before you commit one of the biggest rookie mistakes of stock trading (selling near the bottom).

In addition, we're bombarded (especially lately) with information about how bad the economy is doing right now. The economy is really a trust-based system that thrives when consumers have confidence in it and doesn't when they don't. Sure, there are some issues with the fundamentals of our credit markets, but they pale in comparison to the mental specter of recession and how we react to it.

Just like shark attacks, SARS, the Asian Bird Flu, and other over-hyped crises, the mass media is doing a bang up job of making sure everyone in the U.S. is scared. After all, if people are scared they'll buy more newspapers and watch more TV to monitor the situation. In the current media environment, sensationalism sells.

Combine these two things and you have a perfect storm for market volatility. When you log into your online brokerage account, you're probably presented with the performance of the shares you own as well as news items relating to them. As you read about how badly IBM is doing, it's all too easy to click a few buttons and sell off your IBM stock. While it's a boon to usability and it makes the online trading companies money (they make money on every trade whether you do or not), is it the best thing for our stock market?

Thursday, December 4, 2008

For Sale: Rocky Mountain News

Denver may soon lose its distinction as one of the few remaining cities with two operating daily newspapers. The Rocky Mountain News was officially placed on sale Thursday. Do you think anyone is going to come forward to purchase this nearly 150-year-old Colorado institution or is Denver's fate as a single daily newspaper town now sealed?

Is the older-than-50 TV news anchor a relic?

Back when I was a youngster, some of the most respected TV news anchors were the seasoned veterans -- trustworthy types like Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor. But is the era of the older-than-50 TV news anchor over now? And if it is, do you think it's going to have any kind of impact on the audience's perception of the reliability of TV news anchors?