WEEKLY WHINE

Market rap

I haven't had much to do this week, so I've been watching quite a bit of CNBC. For those of you who are unaware, CNBC is the Cable News and Business Channel, the one with the blue-n-white ticker. CNBC is probably one of the most overlooked television networks out there, primarily because of the ticker. Folks assume that anything with a ticker is automatically boring. Sometimes they're right, but sometimes they're not. I use CNBC not because I have to track important stocks or because I want to get involved in commodities, but because I find it interesting.

One interesting thing about CNBC is the ticker itself. It's often fun to watch symbols go past and attempt to determine what they are. T, for example, is AT&T. KO is Coca-Cola, and MCD is fairly obvious. On the bottom ticker, you see the Nasdaq and AMEX prices. AMZN is Amazon, XCIT is Excite, and INTL is Intel. Sometimes there is an interesting one like BOB or DUK or AA. There isn't an AAA, but there is an AA. The markets close at 16:00 ET, after which they run everyone's close alphabetically. Sometimes, there will appear stocks that are valued at something like 3/16. GoobNet does not sanction those stocks. Other instances will have a green stock with an up arrow, but it won't specify by how much it increased.

Of course, most of the screen is occupied by the on air personalities, such as Ron Insana, host of "Street Signs", a two hour show weekdays at 14:00 ET. I however call it "The Ron Insana Show" because that sounds much cooler. Mr Insana definitely has a great name. On his show, he talks about the stock market. There's a bit called "Pit Stop" wherein he talks to some analyst person. Of course, he spends most of the show talking to some analyst people, but the Pit Stop guest is the best.

One of my favourite parts is the graphs. CNBC has good graphs. When they display a graph, the on air personality is reduced to approximately 1/16 of the screen's total area, a small box in the upper right hand corner. This leaves plenty of room for the graph. The "intra-day" graphs are the best, because you can see how much a particular stock moved throughout the day, or "trading session" as they call it. The intra-day graph is usually reserved for indexes like the DJIA or the Nasdaq composite. Friday's intra-day Dow graph was fun. It dipped between 10:00 and 11:00, then returned to its original level for about a half hour, then fell a bit, then went back up at about 12:30, stayed there until 15:00, then fell a bit again, and then fluctuated by a few points until close.

The Ron Insana Show is only one of CNBC's two hour shows that run during trading sessions. At 12:00 ET, they make way for a show called "Power Lunch". This show just has a great name. It's basically similar to The Ron Insana Show, but without Ron Insana. "Power Lunch" is filled with things that are probably very important to investors, but which I find rather humourous. There are bits on how anything at all affects the market, such as prune shortages. A typical prune report runs like this: "The Dow's mini-correction two weeks ago has been linked directly to the rising cost of prunes. Prunes have had a tough growing season, so the shortage is making itself felt on the commodities board and in consumers' wallets." They also like Internet stocks.

Overall, "Market Wrap" is probably CNBC's best show. It's another two hour show, airing at 16:00 ET, right when the closing bell sounds at the New York Stock Exchange. "Market Wrap" doesn't like Internet stocks as much as "Power Lunch" does, but it does have a bit called "Net Worth", which, as you might expect, is about the worth of the Internet. The worth of the Internet is currently about the entire Nasdaq market. Without the Internet, most Nasdaq companies would cease to exist, such as Autoweb.com, which began trading on Monday under the ticker symbol AWEB. Unfortunately, America OffLine and the Evil Empire would still exist. In fact, America OffLine was probably doing better before the Internet than it is now.

So there you have it. CNBC is nutritious and delicious. It has a bunch of reporters from The Wall Street Journal make reports on random topics. It has many interesting features, which probably surprises some people. For instance, a report on Friday's "Market Wrap" says that Fidelity Investments won't let people call real customer service anymore. They want everyone to use the automated system. Some analyst person pointed out that when a mutual fund like that saves money, that extra money goes back to the investors rather than to the CEO or something, who would get it when a normal company saves money. That's certainly more than was necessary.