Categories: OLD Media Moves

The financial media is not a toy to be used and discarded

Josh Brown, who blogs about the financial markets at The Reformed Broker, writes about how the biggest player in the bond market has turned against the financial media.

Brown writes, “The Bond Kings have it in their heads that the media is spinning a false narrative about the riskiness of the bond market and driving investors out of fixed income funds…

“Here’s Doug Hodge, the COO at PIMCO, as quoted by CNBC yesterday:

“In the aftermath of the financial crisis,the media—which play a large role in setting the tone of the markets and the psyche of investors—went from being cheerleaders for bonds, stressing their virtues and role in maintaining a diversified portfolio, to romancing the notion that bonds are riskier than stocks.”

“There’s some truth to it, but the very same media did the opposite for the prior ten years – it obsessed over the risks for equities and drove a trillion dollars into bond funds, the prime beneficiary of this largesse being none other than PIMCO itself.

“The financial media is not a toy to be used and discarded as you please. It is very serious about itself and it will swing its big, fat pendulum extraordinarily far in both directions – too far, eventually – thank you very much. This is how it works. We have some money with PIMCO and I have a great deal of respect for that firm. They are the largest bond manager, so I use them as an example here.

“The media was absolutely culpable in both the creation of the Bond Kings mythology as well as the notion that plowing huge chunks of one’s portfolio into low-yielding investments with interest rates having no eventual direction but up was somehow safe. At the top of the bond market earlier this year, investors were actually paying the government, in real terms, to hold onto their cash – and there’s no question that the media was somewhat culpable in feeding into the idea that this was somehow ‘conservative.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

Recent Posts

PCWorld executive editor Ung dies at 58

PCWorld executive editor Gordon Mah Ung, a tireless journalist we once described as a founding father…

20 hours ago

CNBC taps Sullivan as “Power Lunch” co-anchor

CNBC senior vice president Dan Colarusso sent out the following on Monday: Before this year comes to…

2 days ago

Business Insider hires Brooks as standards editor

Business Insider editor in chief Jamie Heller sent out the following on Monday: I'm excited to share…

2 days ago

Is this the end of CoinDesk as we know it?

Former CoinDesk editorial staffer Michael McSweeney writes about the recent happenings at the cryptocurrency news site, where…

3 days ago

LinkedIn finance editor Singh departs

Manas Pratap Singh, finance editor for LinkedIn News Europe, has left for a new opportunity…

4 days ago

Washington Post announces start of third newsroom

Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray sent out the following on Friday: Dear All, Over the last…

5 days ago