Freaking Out Because There's Nothing to Freak Out About

Barry Ritholtz linked to an article with a sensationalized headline that CNBC is "freaking out" over a decline in ratings. No doubt that a TV network would be concerned over a drop in ratings but who knows if anyone at the network is actually freaking out or not. Over the last few months page views on this blog have gone down.

One observation made in the past is that bull markets are bad for blogging business and probably also stock market television too. There are always threats to the market and now is no exception; Europe is quite obviously deteriorating, jobs in the US might be rolling over a little and the bull run that started three years ago could easily be starting to get long in the tooth. Again these are risk factors (there are others as well) that may or may not matter.

Ok so isolating those risk factors or any others important to you and things really aren't that bad right now and haven't been for a while. Please note this is not a discussion about the social disillusionment toward the stock market, simply an observation that the stock market has gone up far more often than not in the last 38 months more than doubling and people still involved with markets might be feeling pretty good.

If people are feeling pretty good or maybe less worried is better, then they might feel they don't need to spend as much time following markets and news related to markets. The housing market has not healed and probably is not healthy but it is not imploding (for now?). You are no longer spending time trying to learn about SIVs, CDOs, CDOs Squared, CoCos, PIKs or any other gimmickry from 2007.

If there were a lot more reasons to worry now or if the current magnitude of worry ramped up then chances are ratings and page views would be much higher but when you're not worrying about the end of the world financial system then you probably have a little less work to do.

The reason to discount stock market social disillusionment for a decline in stock market TV ratings and page views is that it seems more likely that the people (permanently?) turned off by the markets were probably not the ones spending hours on dozens of websites trying learn about all the gimmickry listed in the previous paragraph, more likely these folks were marginally attached through their 401ks and more likely only kept tabs on big headlines. That is not a shot, most people have very little interest in following markets closely and someone not that interested whose 401k cut in half again could easily throw their hands up and be done. But again, this group was probably not inclined to seek out stock market content on a blog or watch CNBC before going to work.

The above reasonably paints a picture of complacency for those still in markets. Now is the time to remember that there will be a bear market again and some sort of trigger point for defensive action will be essential for some folks and those folks should mentally prepare to be disciplined to their trigger point and have some idea of what specific action they might take if market circumstances dictate.