{"id":126,"date":"2008-07-02T07:15:35","date_gmt":"2008-07-02T14:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/investing\/its-a-bull-market-oh-wait-sorry-never-mind\/"},"modified":"2008-07-02T07:15:35","modified_gmt":"2008-07-02T14:15:35","slug":"bear-market-never-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/investing\/bear-market-never-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Bear Market – Never Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a great scene in the movie The Paper with Michael Keaton in which the characters are sitting in a conference room discussing the next day\u2019s front page.\u00a0 There has been a big sensational story, and they ponder over how to best deliver a headline.\u00a0 When they finish, one of the characters says, \u201cWith a slammer (exclamation point).\u201d\u00a0 At which point, one of the characters rolls her eyes and says something about heaven forbid if they ever ran a headline with an exclamation point.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never worked in a newsroom and I have no idea how accurate the movie is, but I do know that newspapers and magazines work very hard to grab our attention with their headlines, and if they can use a powerful buzz word, then so much the better.<\/p>\n

Yeah! It\u2019s a Bear Market\u2026Not.<\/h3>\n

\"bearbull\"<\/a> On Monday, the stock market closed just over 19.5% down from the last high point.\u00a0 This is significant, because the definition of a Bear Market <\/em>is when the stock market is down 20% from its previous high.\u00a0 Yesterday, the markets started the day lower dipping enough to slide below the magic 20% number.\u00a0 The results were almost instant.\u00a0 On every major business web site and even on numerous regular news sites, the headlines flew up in large bold characters.\u00a0 Bear Market<\/strong> were the key words in whatever clever phrasing they came up with.\u00a0 The press was happy.\u00a0 Bear Market<\/em> makes for a great buzzword especially as confidence in the overall economy is slipping.<\/p>\n

There was just one problem.\u00a0 Shortly after dipping into bear market territory, stocks started moving back up.\u00a0 By noon, they were in positive territory quashing the bear market generated ever so briefly earlier.\u00a0 I could almost hear the grumbling in the newsrooms.<\/p>\n

In fact, GM reported lower than expected losses and the markets finished the day up.\u00a0 No big bold Bear Market headlines for today\u2019s newspapers.\u00a0 They would have to go with something less powerful (although, I\u2019m sure, just as gloomy).<\/p>\n

Media Outlets and the Markets<\/h3>\n

It is useful to keep this story in mind.\u00a0 Various publications whether they be newspapers, web sites, magazines, or T.V. shows figure they have just seconds to grab your attention.\u00a0 To do that they use flashy buzz filled headlines that they hope will inspire you to give them a chance.\u00a0 There is nothing wrong with this, but it does mean that thoughtful, well-researched money stories must be sought out by intelligent investors and financial advisors.<\/p>\n

Top Ten Best Whatever is hardly a good way to get solid analysis.\u00a0 Look beyond the flashy headlines and read the details.\u00a0 Educate yourself by reading the Finance Gourmet and other resources that provide in-depth looks.\u00a0 Then, make sure you use your brain and think for yourself.\u00a0 After all, does it really matter if the markets are down 19.5 percent or 20.1 percent?\u00a0 Does that affect your portfolio or finances in any way?\u00a0 The answer is it shouldn\u2019t.\u00a0 Your long term financial plan should not react to these short term events, and your short term financial plan should not involve the stock market.\u00a0 So, either way, these headlines are nothing more than entertainment for the smart investor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The stock market dipped below the magic 20 percent needed to call it a bear market yesterday. Media outlets were quick to throw up their bear market headlines, but the markets rallied and exposed the headline game as a gimmick with flashy words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[59,260,335,662,402,502],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-investing","tag-bear-market","tag-headlines","tag-media","tag-news","tag-press","tag-stock-market","no-featured-image-padding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financegourmet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}