Everybody’s an expert

Article Excerpt

Investor response to bad economic news often seems like an allergic reaction to a bee sting. Many investors take each new tidbit of economic news as the sure sign of an ominous new trend. But in fact, there’s a large random element in the economic news. Economic statistics vary between one reporting period and the next, due to a variety of unrelated matters: the weather, what’s on TV and the news, and so on. Adjustments of previous data reports are frequent and often large. Then too, there is a ‘flavour of the week’ aspect to economic news reporting. Virtually every day brings an abundance of economic data. The media can only report on a series of slivers of that data. Investors need an understanding of how the economy works, and it helps to have a realistic idea of the range of possible economic outcomes. But you need to resist the urge to read too much into any single economic measure, much less any…