Investing For Dummies®, 5th Edition

Chapter 17. Perusing Periodicals, Radio, and Television

In This Chapter

• Sifting through financial magazines and newspapers

• Surveying radio and television programs

• Steering clear of most investment newsletters

All the news that's fit to print or broadcast — newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and radio and television programs inundate us with investing information and advice. In this chapter, I explain what to look for — and what to look out for — when you tune in to these media sources in the hopes of investing better.

In Print: Magazines and Newspapers

Visit a newsstand, and you find many investing publications as well as general interest publications with investing columns. I've written investing articles for various magazines and newspapers. Some of the experiences have been enjoyable, others okay, and a few miserable. The best publications and editors I've written for take seriously their responsibility to provide quality information and advice to their readers.

Taking the scribes to task

In this section, I discuss the problems with magazine and newspaper investment articles.

Highlighting hype and horror

Whenever the stock market suffers a sharp decline, many in the media bring out the gloom and doom. Front-page headlines such as "The Beginning of the End" torment investors about holding on to their stocks. An avalanche of such articles, like that seen in late 2002 and early 2003, often coincides with a bottoming stock market. When the stock and real estate markets slid in the late 2000s, ...