Shame on you CNBC!

Ok, I am surely going to upset some people with this post, but as someone who watches, trades, analysis, and writes about the stock market as my main sources of income, I would like to inject my thoughts on the subject here, because while I too hate what the media does to get ratings, there is LOTS of cause for concern out there in this market.

First, let me qualify myself as someone who you might want to listen to - My grandfather was a stock broker and an options trader. My dad was a market maker turned private investor who has co-authored two books on swing trading equities. I have been studying the market since I was about 16, and actively trading since I was 18. I am 27 and have yet to have a losing year, including this year. I tutor people on technical anaylsis, record and produce videos teaching people how to read stock charts and giving a day to day update of market activity and stocks to watch, and am the host and moderator of a stock market chat room with 424 members to date. I have surrounded myself with very smart, very seasoned stock traders, between us we probably have about 150 years of real stock trading experience in the trenches, and not a single one of us has ever seen a market the likes of what we have on our hands right now.

We have been calling for the Dow Jones to hit 10,000 since January, and it looks like we're gonna be there sooner than later. The exposure of the major financial institutions to the sub-prime mortgage has huge implications that are still unwinding as we speak. Actually, I did a very funny cartoon on the sub-prime mess if anyone is interested in checking it out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNupvlgAqas.

That said, I take exactly the opposite stance to you guys in terms of the media - while yes they do fear monger to a certain extent, more often than that they get on and hype a stock, or a sector because they, in essence, are employed by the companies that they are hyping. (CNBC is owned by GE, for example). When people buy stock, that stock price goes up, and they understand that when they get on and hype a stock, many members of the retail investing community will buy that stock blind, driving the price up, which hmakes their bosses happy because they have hundreds of millions of dollars in stock options written into their contracts. As such, I am livid at the irresponsibility of cnbc for telling everyone to "take a long term perspective" and to "buy & hold" while their money goes slowly down the tubes at times like this. Actually, I went on a rant in my market outlook on my website on Monday, after hearing CNBC say that "The bottom was in in the market" about 200 times last week, when anyone with any experience and common sense knew that wasn't the case. Here's an excerpt from my rant, you may get a laugh:

"I have touched on this in the chat room a number of times recently, but it makes me utterly sick to listen to these “experts” and commentators on cnbc that go on TV and pimp whatever stock, commodity or sector that suits their interest at that moment in time, with blatant disregard for the fact that people actually do trust what they say and put their retirement money, or their children’s college money, or whatever, on what they say. Now I am without a doubt an advocate for doing your own research and taking responsibility for your own action, but being in the line of work that I am in, it really upsets me when I make a bad call and members get hurt on it. It does happen, it’s a part of the game, and while we always do our best to put ourselves in the least risky situations possible, in essence every stock trade has an element of chance to it, and everyone has a trade go against them from time to time. However we try our damndest to own up to a mistake, keep on the course, and move on to find the next winning trade. Watching this “oh the bottom is in” (which I must have heard a few dozen times last week), followed by the fear mongering, chicken little “the sky is falling” bs that they throw out there to try and get ratings, without even the slightest acknowledgement of a bad call that might have caused some poor retired couple to have to apply for jobs at the local Wal Mart instead of relaxing on a beach sipping a frozen drink makes me absolutely sick. Shame on you CNBC. That’s all for my rant, thanks for listening. "

So I'll get to the point, because as you can probably gather this is a subject that I'm pretty passionate about and could go on forever. I hate the media and their ulterior motives more than everyone you know, but as a friend and fellow foodie I beg of you to excersize extreme caution in this market, because while yes, this too shall pass, it will get worse before it gets better. If this mess has taught us anything, it should be unequivocally that people need to be more pro-active about their investments, and that "buy & hold", or more accurately "buy & hope", is NOT an investment strategy. Trust me, my business grew about 15 times faster during the bull market than it has in the last year and change, but I do feel a responsibility to call it like I see it, unlike the mainstream media.

I'm not going to go into investment strategies here, but I will say that there are recently added equities called short and ultrashort ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), that are a great way of playing the market to the downside in an IRA or if you don't have margin to short stocks themselves. I've also mentioned that if anyone here is interested in forming some sort of foodie/investor club here on Fohboh I would be happy to do something like that. That said, be careful, be proactive, and as the old saying goes, prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Have a great night.

Jay