This weekend’s Barron’s cover story is entitled, “The Missing Man”, and says that, “the little guy has been a no show for the bull market, even as its riches generate banner headlines”. The article is certainly worth a read and cites very interesting statistics and conclusions similar to ones that readers of our work are familiar with.
Some of the statistics cited in the article include the levels of assets in client accounts at Charles Schwab (up since 2000), the UBS index of investor optimism (at levels similar to 2001), circulation of personal finance magazines (down since 2000), the number of ad pages in financial magazines (down since 2000), and CNBC daytime ratings (down since 2000).
While the UBS investor optimism index and Schwab client assets and trade data can be considered good guides of investor interest, we would place little emphasis on the magazine circulation and CNBC ratings data. Both mediums have seen declines across the board as more people get their news and information from the internet. We would guess that if one were to look at circulation numbers for sports magazines over the last seven years you would likely see the same types of declines, even though Americans are no less interested in sports today than they were seven years ago.
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