Montana paper cuts stock listings, switches to "Money & Markets"

The Helena Independent Record joins the newspapers cutting its stock listings and using the new AP “Money & Markets” page instead, according to a column from business editor John Harrington.

Harrington wrote, “We’ll still include a number of basic elements that explain the daily machinations of the business world: summaries of all the major stock markets, along with listings and recaps of activity in the interest rate, foreign exchange and commodities arenas. A band across the top of the page will give an at-a-glance look at what happened to the Dow, the NASDAQ, the S&P 500, along with Treasuries, gold, the dollar and crude oil.

“The new page’s left-hand ‘rail’ will alert readers for business news to watch for each day, whether it’s a meeting of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, a report on unemployment or housing starts or an earnings report from one of the nation’s bellwether industrial firms.

“Perhaps the biggest changes are to the daily stock and mutual fund listings. We’re trimming the number of stocks carried each day to 100, in order to go into more detail on the stocks we do list. Those hundred stocks are broken into two lists of 50: the 50 largest companies (as ranked by market capitalization) in the country.”

Read more here.