I receive a daily e-mail from SmartMoney.com, usually within an hour or two after the stock markets' closing bell.
While its descriptions of daily trading have usually been in sync with reality, in two of the past three days days they have whitewashed pretty dour news.
Here's how Monday's capsule of the markets' results read:
You might be surprised to learn how big Smart Money thought a mere "dip" was:
I'd say falling within a whisker of 2% below 8000 is more than just a mere "dip." It was more accurately described in this e-mail I received from CNN, of all places, just after the close:
Any thoughts that Smart Money's poor reporting might have been a one-off situation were dispelled when Wednesday's e-mail arrived:
The problem is, the "fizzle" did far more than "erase all gains." It turned the gains into an over 1% loss on the Dow:
What gives here?
This bears watching. While the financial press has exhibited its fair share of anti-capitalist bias over the years, it has more often than not played the daily reports from the floors of the exchanges pretty straight. If that changes significantly and consistently, New Media audits of what really happened each day in the markets may be in order.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
