Why is the world’s best financial journalism optimized for those people who spend their lives placing directional bets on what next week average opinion will expect average opinion to be in the week following?
When I am confronted in my feed with things like this from (one of the few) highly reputable information-intensive sources of ground truth that is not consciously trying to mislead me to advance its own agenda:
I step back and say: WTF?!?!
What use is something like this?
Yes, if you took some money, decided to invest it in the MAMLM-&-datacenter-build-out last January, and picked NVIDIA, right now you are 15% richer but suffer from enormous regret vis-à-vis the world in which you picked Micron. That is a thing. There is a question. There is valid information, presented comprehensively. Thus there is an answer.
But why spend time and induce your readers to spend time on this question and this answer? The write-up goes:
Lynn Thomason: Nvidia Stock Bulls Get Punished in the Run-Up to Earnings : ‘Nvidia has fallen for seven days, its longest run of losses since 2022…. Nvidia’s losing streak: Nvidia shares have fallen in seven straight sessions, the longest run of losses since 2022. It’s a worrying stat for the company’s executives as they prepare to report earnings tomorrow. Here’s what you should know: • It’s still a cash cow. Analysts estimate that revenue nearly doubled last quarter to $92 billion. That’s more than any of its rivals get in a full year. • The competition is heating up. A growing group of upstarts are vying for a bigger share of the market. • Nvidia’s star has dimmed on Wall Street. Though its shares have climbed 15% in 2026, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index has gained 66%. The stock ticked higher on Tuesday morning…. The stock reflects more fear than hope, says MLIV strategist Sebastian Boyd. Its forward P/E ratio is merely in line with the S&P 500. In other words, traders don’t put much faith in earnings growth beating the broader market after next year. • Bank of America says buy. Last week, the bank’s analysts called it a “compelling opportunity,” saying the stock trades at a discount of as much as 50%. Their price target? $350. • Price hikes are coming. Chipmaker stocks have been rattled in recent days by news that some of Nvidia’s biggest customers were told about AI-related price increases above 15%. • Nvidia is an industry lynchpin. As the company helps arrange financing for AI infrastructure, some are calling it the “central bank of AI.”
And then another graph:
Do not get me wrong: Bloomberg is a magnificent information source. And one of the few places that still pays journalists healthy sums these days where the journalists can hold their heads up very high as practitioners of their craft, rather than as some form of PR in disguise.
But, still, the way that this information is presented is as if Bloomberg thinks that the paying customers it needs to keep are those who are making month-to-month jumps in asset allocation, placing directional bets on what is going to happen to asset prices in the short run in anticipation of what average opinion will expect average opinion to be. In pushing forward that way of thinking, Bloomberg is not inducing its readers to be their best selves.
What should it be doing? Well, I think every time it writes about NVIDIA and Micron, it should highlight graphs like these:
Isn’t that the context people need to be pushed to put into the forefront of their brains as they think about anything to do with this? GPU chip design, memory chip design and manufacture, the excellence of these two companies at those tasks, how big the MAMLM-&-datacenter-build-out is, and when and where NVIDIA and Micron became the limited-supply rent-collecting chokepoints here: isn’t that the path that readers should be nudged to follow as they think?
The Bloomberg write-up on NVIDIA’s “losing streak “is competent and comprehensive: doubled revenue, heating competition, a dimmed Wall Street star, a BofA “buy,” coming price hikes, the “central bank of AI.”
All true.
All largely beside the point, unless the key reader is someone placing month-to-month directional bets in a Keynesian General Theory chapter 12 “The State of Long-Term Expectation” beauty contest — anticipating what average opinion expects average opinion to be. That’s not journalism inviting readers to think well. The context that belongs at the front of the mind is different.
Yes. When I pay $415 / yr for news, I don't want to see clickbait. That it is covered with ads is annoying enough. It will be interesting to see what happens to Bloomberg when the founder is gone.