STREET DOGS

Television is not the truth! Television is a God-damned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We’re in the boredom-killing business! So if you want the truth … Go to God! Go to your gurus! Go to yourselves! Because that’s the only place you’re ever going to find any real truth. — Howard Beale in Network.

Talking about long-term ideas, opportunities and trends as well as substantive issues related to the markets might actually help people, but the purveyors of business television largely assume that immediacy and urgency are necessary to capture viewers — and they may be right about that. But it’s become a charade. The entire conceit is ridiculous because the “news” being reacted to is almost always functionally irrelevant to any meaningful investment process. Yet CNBC and its ilk roll with the charade that something urgent must be reported. The idea is to feign hotness, newness and originality in order to attract eyeballs. — Robert Seawright

The television generation expects [the stock market] to act the way they want it to. The notion that the [market] obeys its own rules and doesn’t give a damn about your expectations comes as a massive shock. — Michael Crichton

The majority of market news is not only useless, but harmful to your financial health. There is virtually no accountability in the financial pundit arena. People who have been wrong about everything for years still draw crowds. Thirty years ago, there was one hour of market TV per day. Today there’s upwards of 18 hours. What changed isn’t the volume of news, but the volume of drivel. What markets do day to day is overwhelmingly driven by … chance. — Morgan Housel Michel Pireu (pireum@streetdogs.co.za)