Financial Porn?
The Motley Fool’s Doug Short writes about “Financial Porn”…(via Talking Biz News)
The program formats for these business channels feature the same basic routines. They alternate between interviews with fund managers — “What are you buying in this market?” — and showdowns between financial pundits on hot topics — “Are we heading for a recession? Is it time to nibble on financials? Will we get a January rally?”
The phrase “financial porn” was coined in 1998 by Jane Bryant Quinn, the Newsweek contributing editor for personal finance. Almost a decade later, my Google search scored more than 1,500 hits on the phrase. It even has an Investopedia entry, which carries an explicit warning: “Short-term focus by the media on a financial topic can create excitement that does little to help investors make smart, long-term financial decisions, and in many cases clouds investors’ decision-making ability.”
