We have learnt some tough lessons said the CEO of India’s largest private sector MF who had promised his unit holders growth with vision. Another voice notorious for his tandaav with the bears a Le Grand From Age if you might call him has turned his tail 180 degrees. He was a bear a big one and is now a bull a quick hurried harmless bull, who gives no guarantee of his species because he might become a bull one day, a bear the other and a dog or a Pig depending on which way the wind is blowing.

The Star anchor of India’s much talked about business channel who was sporting different T Shirts as the sensex moved past each 1000 point brigade is now changing course. Having become an self styled analyst he seems to be cautioning with random and useless double talk with his co-host and changes his colour before you thought that you were color blind. For major part of the October 2008- March 2009  he was cautioning his investors “Make no mistake markets can go down to six and a half or maybe seven ” were his favorite lines and had we been there he would have proclaimed five and a half and six all in an effort to let an investor remain irrational in irrational times. No wonder he leapt at a Singapore based Hedge fund manager who had the guts to call him a panic driven desperate gatekeeper of a theater which had caught fire. I wonder who is having the last laugh now.

Coming back to our fearless bear he had the courage to call Buffett lucky well if luck makes money and intellect loses it I’d rather be lucky then intelligent. Mr. Bear writes a report every few days. He is good at English and probably a student of Gynecology. In one of his reports he was doing a pregnancy test on the bull! He said that after checking the urine he is of the opinion that this is not a bull market and that a bull trap. Those reports do make for interesting reading especially if you are fond of brushing up your English.

Then there is another who sees to rhythm with the range. His ranges are as deep as the Grand Canyon. The last time he was talking about 8000 anmd 16,000 and he seems to have upped his higher band at 19,500. Well if that is what the Stanley’s and the Goldman’s pay for then I’d rather be an employee then an investor.

I think that there is no way to check the quality on the Idiot Box for whatever reason it is called one. Now no one can tell me that you should switch off the TV because that means that if there is murder going on in front of my house I should just move away from the window and pull the curtains.

Markets are not about making a day trader out of every participant. It is also about long term education and if that looks too charitable to these business channels then well, good luck to them because sooner or later they will have to go free to air for their free advice. But as the critics would say there is are no free lunches in the world.

There is some serious flaw in the way the business channels operate. Either they are too stupid to understand their drawback or either too much hand in glove with the participants to create a psychology that they seem to have desired.

It takes no magic wand to understand why certain people including the self proclaimed momentum trader and several others are put up as mascots time and again. I think the primary precondition to have your face on TV is your English speaking skills rather then your thinking ones. No wonder the best of the speakers get mud and dust on their face but that's ok as long as there is a market we will have opinions but to blow the trumpet every time there is an opinion and to expect the crowd to be the bunch of rats and the mascot to be the Pied Piper of Hamlin is something that the crowd will be able to decipher sooner rather then later.

But as Gustave Le Bon wrote his book “THE CROWD A study of the Popular mind” the most eminent men seldom surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. From the intellectual point of view an abyss might exist between a great mathematician and his boot maker but from the point of view of character the difference is most often slight or non existent.

Strangely making money in the markets is 65% character and 35% intellect.

Also see: http://www.theequitydesk.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=213 - Letter from a bruised bull to the"expert"analyst.

Great piece, Basant !!! I couldn't have expressed my own thoughts in a better manner.

But I have some sympathy for some of these experts. The gatekeeper has to talk something all the time and thus has to focus on minute by minute movements. He cant just say - there was some usual buying or selling today, so shut your TV for the day - he will lose his job !! Similarly, unlucky sharma makes money by getting people to trade - so its better if everybody becomes a day trader and focuses on quarterly numbers and weekly stock movement.

There is some serious flaw in the way the business channels operate. Either they are too stupid to understand their drawback or either too much hand in glove with the participants to create a psychology that they seem to have desired.

Basant Ji,

If ever I buy a media stock, the dominating factor as always is revenue earnings. Media Companies earn their revenues from corporate world by way of advertisements. Time tested formula to gauge a new public offering is to see aggressive advertising by a particular company. Some old timers always feel that any company doing aggresive corporate advertising campaign has always something up its sleeve- a initial public offering- a rights issue- a acquisition a merger or something else.

If a corporate entity is being regularly featured in talk shows on all channels that means  that company wants to put their message accross directly or indirectly. Is it not the same as you find leaders of all political parties in studios of every broadcaster during election time.

Market and media have something in common

Both of them are unpredictable in nature and there are experts in them.

They excite the people.

Media and experts can not control market and market can not keep them aside. Partly they are complementary to each other

People in market are in market and directly and indirectly they are in media too.

People can not avoid media because that is the source of knowledge. In that respect I consider TV to internet through news paper as the media of the people.

Media and market are made by the people but the question remains how far are they for the people! Probably the answer is unknown and the effect on people is absolutely person specific. But I think that the influence of media and the experts in market gradually decrease as long as people become more experienced in the market that of course take a little longer term (at least a few years.)

Tim (TMFMmbop) and Nathan (TMFDoraemon) are co-advisors of Motley Fool Global Gains and, as part of their http://wiki.fool.com/Due_diligence - due diligence , have traveled to China, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. Next week, http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/25/ecap.htm?aid=3280&source=iggedilnk2552053 - they're off to India to visit with companies and investors and to get the perspective from the ground. Their itinerary includes visits with Educomp Solutions, Ranbaxy Labs, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories (NYSE: http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/RDY.aspx - RDY ), HDFC Bank (NYSE: http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/HDB.aspx - HDB ), Rediff.com (Nasdaq: http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/REDF.aspx - REDF ), Larsen & Toubro, Apollo Hospitals, and Sify Technologies (Nasdaq: http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/SIFY.aspx - SIFY ).

By small investor, I think he means the "height" of an investor. Perhaps his research revealed that investors below 5 feet 4 inches tall perform poorly in equities?