Andrew Feinberg, writing for Slate: If you want to design a financial channel where investors underperform the stock market, broadcast cable news and ostensibly try to make your viewers better investors. It would create CNBC, NBC's financial services arm. If you're calm and rational (there's also someone named Jim Cramer, but I'll get to him later), you'll see someone foaming at the mouth about a stock that could triple in six months, or a worried Cassandra. There is no need for someone to appear to warn us that the time has come. Sell everything and dig underground. Still, it manages to keep the audience interested by keeping them suspenseful, worried, and confused about what will happen next. Anxiety is your friend, and you'll find your audience overly wary of your bread and butter. In other words, CNBC keeps viewers on their toes in a very specific way. I am worried that I will incur losses due to the market downturn. I worry about missing out on hot trends and stocks. Or you're not sure if you're in the right sector. Then an “expert” comes along and says, “Hey, you're in the wrong field. It's time to move away from technology and into industrial, financial, or healthcare.” In a calm and rational way, networking creates a sense of urgency. The tone is definitely not infomercial-like, but the message may be similar. I thought of it, but it was a lucky day. The problem is that over-caution is probably the worst quality most investors have. The late Charlie Munger advised investors to “hang tight” and emphasized that when it comes to investing, less is more. Tension leads to over-trading. Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business, says, “All the evidence shows that the more individual investors trade, the worse their performance is.'' “Buying or selling something based on what you see on CNBC is unlikely to be a successful strategy.”
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