Negative news. Don't listen to the noise

older_and_no_wiser

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday season and thanks for all the great advice over the last year.

Also I wanted to highlight how the media portrays investing news. They constantly concentrate on negative news. Look at the image from the BBC Business site when you check out the S&P 500. 2023 has been a great year but still they have a negative article from last year which is all doom and gloom.

Just ignore the news. Investing has its ups and downs. Just keep calm and carry on..... investing. 

jaypers

Since COVID, I have come to hate the media more and more. It seems that in addition to complete bias everywhere, all they are interested in reporting is doom, gloom and sensationalist exaggeration of impending disaster. Seriously does my head in. Merry Christmas and keep investing! 

friolento

Spare a thought this Christmas for the 14 million people in the UK who are living in poverty, and for perhaps a similar number of people who don’t live in poverty yet still can’t spare a penny to invest, or even to save. Be grateful if you are not affected by the cost of living crisis but don’t pretend it isn’t real.

jaypers

friolento said:

Spare a thought this Christmas for the 14 million people in the UK who are living in poverty, and for perhaps a similar number of people who don’t live in poverty yet still can’t spare a penny to invest, or even to save. Be grateful if you are not affected by the cost of living crisis but don’t pretend it isn’t real.

I suspect that nobody on here would do that but with respect this particular group is about savings and investments. Do we need to caveat every post with a cost of living comment? What about Gaza? Oh, and don’t forget the terrible war in Ukraine still going on. 

Yes, poverty and hardship is a terrible thing. I’m sure many on here do their part to support good causes but we aren’t here to discuss that.

tacpot12

The media does appear to be very negative, and I suspect there are other forces (principally Russia) that are feeding discontent into social media platforms to try to persuade us that our society is failing. While we do have problems here in the UK, the counsel of doom does very little to improve matters. What helps is for each person to do what they can to improve things for each other. 

MSE provides an ideal forum to help others, whether it be with investment decisions or managing their debts.

In 2024, I hope we find ways to become more generous to each other and to tackle the problems we face with positivity. 

Thank you to everyone who contributes to MSE.  

boingy

It's definitely fashionable for the media and the opposition parties to talk down the economy. Every week a "think tank" or "research group" publishes their wisdom and the press cherry pick the negative headlines from it. 

Someone forecasts a recession and then, when it doesn't happen, instead of celebrating it they just say "ooh, but the next quarter is looking really grim". The problem with continually talking down the economy is that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

GazzaBloom

"Stock market behaving normally and continuing to deliver typical average long term returns with occasional bouts of volatility, our expert analysts advise to keep buying in each month, year in year out and ignore the headlines" doesn't make for much a news story, there's not many clicks in that for the ad revenue compared to "Jeremy Grantham & Ray Dalio predict 2024 recession and markets to drop 40%"

Swipe

Yep, ignore the news and just keep investing what you can afford every month regardless until retirement.

DiamondLil

friolento said:

Spare a thought this Christmas for the 14 million people in the UK who are living in poverty, and for perhaps a similar number of people who don’t live in poverty yet still can’t spare a penny to invest, or even to save. Be grateful if you are not affected by the cost of living crisis but don’t pretend it isn’t real.

There will be those on here - and I am one - who have lived exactly as you describe. And like me, I'm sure they spare more than a thought for those people.

eskbanker

older_and_no_wiser said:

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday season and thanks for all the great advice over the last year.

Also I wanted to highlight how the media portrays investing news. They constantly concentrate on negative news. Look at the image from the BBC Business site when you check out the S&P 500. 2023 has been a great year but still they have a negative article from last year which is all doom and gloom.

Just ignore the news. Investing has its ups and downs. Just keep calm and carry on..... investing. 

But the S&P500 had dropped by about 12% in the three weeks leading up to that headline, so it was accurate to report on global stock markets falling (assuming others were broadly aligned - I haven't checked) at the time.  Obviously hindsight clarifies that, despite further lows beyond that mid June level, there's been a solid recovery for that particular index from Q4 2022 - no idea why they've stopped publishing news stories about it on that page in the last 18 months, but personally wouldn't see it as indicative of any negative agenda as such!  In other words, the message should be 'ignore old news' rather than 'ignore the news'....

Albermarle

Often I see a headline like ' stock market in free fall' only to check the facts, and it has dropped a couple of %, and by lunchtime has already regained some of the losses.
We often have new posters who say ' thinking it is not a good time to invest with markets in turmoil' when they are not.
Also apart from the sensationalist and negative reporting, I think people generally just assume that if the global news is bad- Covid, cost of living, Ukraine, Gaza, climate change, Gaza etc then the financial markets must also be bad, without actually checking what is really happening.