September 5, 2025
Pretend for a moment you are the head honcho at CNBC, the Consumer News and Business Channel (no one knows that is what CNBC stands for). Your problem is to attract an audience from roughly 6am to 7pm or so. And you must do so on days where nothing is really happening, which happens a lot.
Well, one potential solution: You amp everything to gin up the viewers’ attention. So magnified into items of major importance are things like Chicago Business Barometer PMI (Purchasing Manager’s Index), or Advanced Retail Inventories (Eyes glazing over here), or the ADP Employment Report (notoriously inaccurate).
You gather a panel of ‘experts’ to parse every little detail and wiggle:
“Well, corrugated box sales showed some weakness…” They argue back and forth, it can even get heated. There might also be three-stocks-to-buy-now if you follow that. And then break to commercial and then move onto the next data point to be announced tomorrow/Friday/Monday/whenever.
All looks pretty important except they will all be adjusted multiple times.
Just consider something that theoretically is important…The next action on interest rates to be taken by the Federal Reserve. The Fed meets every 60 days on that one, it is a clear-the-decks moment for the financial media. You can tell by the size of the panel…Fed announcements could have eight or nine wagging heads. And inevitably, when they announce, it’s one of two things:
First, they are standing pat because they need more data. Thus, the insatiable need for data by AI was preconditioned by the Fed, but people miss that. Or they make a move. The move is hardly ever, ever, ever a surprise. It has been signaled endlessly by Fed Governors at the podium, setting it up. They do not want to surprise markets.
And then you know what? In 15 minutes or so, the panel, exhausted by the effusion of hot air and cold reality, pivots to the next meeting. And thus begins the rinse and repeat: Endlessly guess the next move, parse all the potentials when it happens, then pivot to the next and you’re off and running again.
Or the CPI comes out and the Great Quibble begins. Sure, it was a bit hot but there was that strike that cut supply short on widgets so the temporary spike in widgets pushed the number higher. Cue intense panel debate as to whether this is a new wave or will recede. And then of course pivot to guessing the next CPI print.
Worth remembering that reported CPI measures housing costs by something call Owner’s Equivalent Rent…they ask you and I what we’d rent our homes for. Call me crazy, call me stupid, but I think the median housing sale price is better. But they changed that years ago because the median housing price inflated inflation. And then we all go nuts when CPI is announced? For the gearheads among us, the details are at the end of this piece, if you’re interested.
I think because this economic parsing is so endemic, people conclude that it must absolutely be important. Otherwise, why would so much time be spent on it?
Well, you’re already clued in…they put us through this because they need viewers because they have the advertising pitch coming up with some corporate advertising prospect and they need to prove the ad spend will be worthwhile.
The inevitable result is that investors find themselves mired in the Slough of Despond. That Medieval swamp of confusion and mud and hesitation and the chipping away of confidence. Pulled in one direction, then another…tune in to get clarity! Which is ever elusive, and you never quite get there. And then, investors act on these things and sabotage their returns.
Emotions engaged when just the right wagging head hits just the right data point in just the right way to generate action.
Because of course, it is action, it is people hitting buy/sell buttons that makes the media mare go:
Let me just say it here. When I am trading or investing in markets (the former is a 1–5-week timeframe and the latter, 1–5-year timeframe), I am decidedly not playing. I play gin rummy with Michael, I play golf. But when putting money at risk, it’s all business and I’m not playing.
So, the business plan seems simple enough to me. Get people to play, because when they play, they play often. Give them ideas to play with and then they tune in to get follow-up and rinse and repeat. Creates recurring eyeballs.
Moreover, the Intel story is not one of ‘horror’ or ‘suspense.’ It’s the story of a great American icon that lost its way, or more accurately, got left at the innovation starting line. And now, they are struggling to turn the ship. And that struggle will be a long slog, a long, drawn-out affair with acres of boredom and an occasionally important event. So much for playing. It actually works.
Now part of the financial media script is to appeal more to traders and not investors. It is not for nothing that CNBC calls one of their programs Fast Money. And just look at the set…ESPN-inspired. What do they call their noon market wrap? The Half Time Show. This sport-as-investing analogy is an accurate description of what you’re in for.
The Halftime Report…Investing or Football?
This tends to be the opposite business plan of the big investment-advice houses in finance. Firms long ago moved to an advice-for-fee model. And in that, it is not the activity that pays the rent, but the results. The client cedes discretion, the advisor/manager performs, or not, the contract lets the client out at any time with no penalty. They don’t even have to give a reason. And this long-term horizon is closer in concept to, say, what Warren Buffett does…buy good stuff and stay in it and not fool around with it.
I again draw the distinction between trading and investing. In trading, you’re fooling around with ‘it’ all the time.
You see, the shorter your investment or trading time frame, the shorter your attention span, the more rapidly you’re scanning screens for any little wrinkle. The more you need to tune in. Thus, your short term and rapid engagement with media increases viewer count and winds up in the pitch book to advertisers.
Of course, there is an underlying assumption that if they give you good ideas you will stay tuned. But it is also true that even as media thrives, study after study shows that overall, advice/picks are no better than a coin toss.
And worse, they tend to focus on whatever they perceive as “hot.” Because they want to attract viewers and there is nothing like a rocketing asset price to attract interest. Which pretty much means you’re not getting a bargain, that an awful lot of people got there before you and thus you are faced with a simple problem: The stock has gone from $100 to $250. So, it is hot. Now do you believe it’s going to $350, and if you weren’t sharp enough on the name, and you let it go to $250, what is your edge to beat the crowd on the stock price?
What happens is that if you take a position, you are then pretty much hooked into whatever program or source got you in, and voila…you become a very steady eyeball count.
I know this all sounds cynical, but the truth is that media is about profits, as they should be. And Libertarian me believes they are free to offer whatever they want to offer (within the law) to their viewers/readers. And you and I are free not to watch or to read.
When finance is presented as a kind of entertaining sport, it does not go to a good place. Money, if it is to be kept and grown, demands respect. If you treat it seriously, it will respond. If you treat it as a bro-high-five sporting event, it will respond in kind.
Owner’s Equivalent Rent (OER) is a measure used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to capture housing costs for homeowners in the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Instead of trying to measure the changing value of homes directly (which would be problematic since homes are both consumption goods and investments), OER estimates what homeowners would pay to rent their own homes in the current rental market.
Here’s how it works:
The concept: If you own your home, what would it cost you to rent an equivalent property in your area? This amount represents the “consumption value” of housing services you’re receiving as a homeowner.
Why it’s used: Housing is the largest component of the CPI (about one-third of the total index), so measuring it accurately is crucial for inflation calculations. Using home prices directly would be misleading because:
Home purchases include investment value, not just consumption
Home prices can be volatile and speculative
The CPI is meant to measure consumption, not investment returns
How it’s calculated: The Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys homeowners and asks them to estimate what their home would rent for unfurnished, without utilities. They also use actual rental data from similar properties to verify these estimates.
Impact: OER tends to be less volatile than home prices and often lags behind rapid changes in the housing market, which can make overall inflation measures appear more stable than people’s lived experience of housing costs might suggest.
Thoughts, questions, or reflections? I’d love to hear them. You can reach me anytime at anthony@workingprofit.com
