Dec

27

Most books and movies have a indirect way of indicating that their talent and authors are fellow travelers. The common thing is to have the radio or tv on showing some stereotyped situation where the rich are living in mansions while the homeless are on the street, or a Republican President like Regan or Bush or Nixon saying something that looks evil and cold-hearted when taken out of context. A new technique would be "Fox News would have us believe that"…."tenure gives university professors the green light to teach that revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system is appropriate." What are some of the other techniques? How does financial news color the news to make us do and think the wrong things?

Scott Brooks writes:

It doesn't matter what you say, it can be edited to be anything that the "opposition" (whoever they may be) needs it to be. Witness Alan Grayson's attack on Dan Webster.

In today's MTV short attention span 10 second sound bite world, the media can easily manipulate the 90% of the population that are the "unthinking masses". They lack the critical thinking skills necessary to put 2 and 2 together to get 4. Unfortunately, in today's society, the world is much more complicated than 2 and 2. The media, the government and complicit so called capitalists industry (which they are not) have complicated things so much that we're way past 2 and 2….we're easily at 3 and 3 and with the housing market derivative meltdown we're at 4 and 4.

Asking 90% of the population to put 4 and 4 together is ridiculous…..you may as well ask them to explain how gravity works.

Ken Drees writes:

Looking back at 2010 and market / news coverage related trades I would confess that I missed a big one–being taken in by fear even when intuitively I knew I should have tried to buy that fear.

BP

The coverage was oppressive. Obama was going to keep a boot on the throat, x billion was for "starters". BP would have to sell off divisions, they would be constantly garnished—every market guy on tv said BP this and BP that but always ended the interview with "Of course I would not buy it at this level yet".

I made up my mind to pass it up since I couldn't figure out how the USgov was going to handle it. BP CEO looked out of touch–yacht racing when he should have been in the bunker, then he gets sacked. Someone was buying all that BP stock and Jeff Watson framed the big picture of how much was spilling into how big an area–but the logic of this was weighed with the fact that cap was still leaking and the blowout may need a nuclear option and the shrimpers were committing suicide.

The news was the most bleak and black–and not only network news but blogs and such. In the end I missed a biggie—there is a lesson to be learned here that I still have not completely distilled out in terms of what triggered me not to even "try" a trade. Even when the leak stopped–it seemed like it would not hold!

George Coyle writes:

Having recently read some books on screen writing techniques, it becomes apparent that certain structures are conventions and are generally present (or should be if one wants to sell dreams to studios for production). Also, the biggest grossing films tend to be either love stories or Horatio Alger style rags-to-riches tales of the poor boy turned not so poor. People love these stories because they allow escape into the ideal growth toward fame and fortune (financial or otherwise) and provide hope. We don't see many modern videos selling being green or moral values either…it is all g5 this, bling that, etc. Take Avatar of late, crippled none-too-bright man on earth becomes champion of a new world, gets the girl, becomes the leader, etc. Hollywood is notorious for sticking with what works and the fact is selling love and rags-to-riches tales just trump the alternatives because who wants tragedy in fantasy or to come out of a situation we paid for feeling bad, life provides more than enough of that. It is a story telling norm and is rarely violated in mainstream commercial profit seeking films. So patterns not only exist, they were specifically tailored to what made a profit last time and will again. As pretty much everyone is seeking more wealth and/or love and wouldn't turn down becoming the hero of a new world we all become fellow travelers on these stories. The stories feed our hope of being something greater.

As for popular media, especially the financial variety, they seem to filter their speakers to suit the topic du jour. During the crisis Roubini was a financial God and was quoted by everyone I knew but he doesn't get near as much air time at present with the spx nearly double the crisis lows. Should the market collapse again they will undoubtedly trot out the doomsday seers to explain why the longs got it so wrong. Media giants allow price action to dictate program lineups such that when markets go one way or another out come the biggest advocates of that move to tell us all why. It serves as a reinforcing phenomenon and can foster buying more or widespread panic depending on the environment. But I feel people will generally believe what they hear on tv (especially people who aren't market professionals). It would be interesting to see the p n l of following the recommendations of all of the commentators. Who knows if they are telling us the truth or dumping their positions profitably to the general populace.

Galt Niederhoffer writes in with a comment:

Movies have always been a populist medium and the structure of the plot is best suited for very simple ideas to be proven or disproven with beginning, middle and end. I don't think writers are socialists by nature. I just think that movie plots best lend themselves to tales of good and evil and it's easiest to prove the error of new, mass or radical ways than the opposite.

Gary Rogan writes:

The most important tool at the disposal of the information industry is choosing what not to cover. If it's a politician they like, they will not cover significant concerns about their background, like the lack of basic information about their past. If it's a financial bailout, etc. they will create an illusion that there is a consensus supporting it by concentrating on those with the "right" opinions.


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