I’m the kind of person who lets their worldview formulate by input from sources such as The Economist and Bloomberg articles (and sometimes you people) which I filter using my own education and independant critical thinking. I dislike news sources that make me feel like part of the goal of the writing is to push me in certain direction by selecting only part of the information on the matter. (Huffington Post for example) I’m not so dense as to think there isn’t always some mild slant, but I would rather have my information dished out to me without passion. Just tell me the news. How does it connect with other issues.
Part of me feels this is a collection of specifically choosen information to color the situation in a passionate way. Like there is a slant… which is if it sucks, it’s going to happen. Either that or I’m afraid and blaming it on a “slant”.
So which is it that is more in touch with reality… Zero Hedge or The Economist?
Definitely the Economist. That said, Zerohedge is not one author. Some are decent and have some make you think articles. Others are loonie conspiracy crap. Few gems in that swamp though.
What geo said. Sometimes they pull some great insights. They made a call about US aircraft deployments one time that came off really tin foil hattish but ended up playing out. I forget what exactly it was though.
Definitely serves a purpose though. Only like 15% of what you read from even an excellent source is going to be critically usable. With ZH it might be 10% (arbitrary #'s) but in the cesspool that is modern research that warrents attention.
they’ve been calling a for a market top since late 2009… give them any data point and they will present it in a way claiming the world is about to collapse and hyperinflation is just around the corner… I like the contrarian tilt, but they have been very very wrong about equities.
with that said… they post a daily market recap around 4:15est … which may be the best on the internet in terms of giving a general context to the trading day… the blog is professionally run and one of the most visited sites online which is amazing… the owner has made a fortune on adverstisments with record daily traffic…good for him but hopefully he didnt blow it all going short SPY
That’s smart. The more I’ve done this over the years, the more I find everyone is selling something. Free “information”, means it’s propaganda, why else would they give it to you for free? It represents the views of whoever is funding it (not you).
Bloomberg terminals for example are fantastic (and crazy expensive). Bloomberg.com articles are free and seem quite fact-based, until you really dig into every number and find they are full of statistical manipulation (loads of nationalism), very slick though. The free analytics from “Factset” are bottom of the barrel, math-nonsense, always selling something.
LOL, but these guys are just flat out crazy. Anyone read the comments section? These people can’t even be comprehended…very very strange.
Used to read ZH and trade off it when i first joined the industry. Turned me into a permabear, a poor perma. ill still glance it over here and there but they tend to overstate the negatives.
Agree with what others have said on here. A lot of what ZH posts is crap and “Tin foil hattish” for sure. That said, there are some really good market articles that are taken directly from sell-side notes and other prominent sources. I fell out of using it years ago, but have more recently started looking at it again. If anything it does offer a good contrarion view.
Thanks for the input everyone. Thats what I was thinking. My default go to when it comes to what is going on in the world is The Economist. It is _pragmatic heaven (_plus, the random placement of dry humor is great). However, its strength also its weakness… it tends to assume everyone will behave with pragmatism. They did not think Dilma Rousseff would be impeached and they did not think Trump would make it past the primaries. It is probably a good idea to keep one eye on ZH.
ZH came into prominence during the 08 meltdown when it did seem indeed that the world was coming to an end. That time spawned a lot of gloom and doom sites–another prominent one at the time was The Market Ticker which had a fake ticker tape running across the top of the site showing prices eg AAPL…$8.00…GS…$2.50…etc The guy who ran that made his identity known unlike the founders of ZH at the time.
The addition of ad space slowed the site down and in other ways corrupted what had potential to be a good product. Interestingly, the site was blocked from access on most of the terminals at major banks like GS and MS. The majority of the reader comments are beyond bearish–more survivalist, gun nuts, and of course, gold bugs.
Yea, that’s how this whole thing started. I met one of these guys at work. I was doing a private dance for this guy and it came up that I was into trading (guys always wanna be creepy during these things and ask me “oooh, what are you into” and then I play dumb and tell them stuff I’m “into” … like running or trading). Anyway, apparently this guy follows markets and whatever so the conversation moved from commodities to global perspective (yea… still dancing for this guy. $20 bucks every 4min). I reach over and grab my Economist to prove I’m not making this up (yea, I actually do carry it around with me at work. I read it when I get bored). He’s like" Meh! I hate the economist… You gotta read the alternative news." I was like… “what, like Zerohedge?” He was cool with ZH but started spewing out these other sources like dollarcollapse.com and some pay only site of this guy who has a model of prediction so accurate that they threw him in jail (??)… (here is you tin foil hat, sir). He also went on to tell me that hoarding gold wasn’t enough. He was hoarding wedding rings so when the melt down comes folks won’t suspect he is prepared and that he is just hocking a wedding ring out of despiration. By this point, he had rung up quite a tab so I got dressed and we went our separate ways. Just another Sunday night for KMD.
The best value of ZH is when they include excerpts of credible research. I effectively use it solely to get a peak of research I don’t have access to. Whatever the author actually comments when it comes to market opinion (which is usually a fiesta of self-confirmatory statements with a hearty dose of hyperlinks), I barely pay attention to.
Being zealously bearish was all the craze after the crisis but those that have built a reputation on that worldview and stuck to it, indeed go down rightfully as conspiracy nuts today. Some other famous bears have worked hard to get rid of the perma label (Rosenberg, Roubini…) but now they just sound like anybody else. Point is, the industry’s most respected thinkers don’t have a fucking clue what’s going to happen next but you have a zerohedge that’s always there to cherry pick the micro development du jour, inflate it, and tell you "Yup, see this? We told you here, here and here".
Can we get some money together and stage a hostile takeover of ZH?
The golden age of financial-satire commentary is here! These coke-head derivative traders have totally squandered their shot. Man these guys could troll the finance sector like Breitbart trolls the libs. So much wasted potential.
