I make this point regularly – the financial media is catering to the advertisers. Nothing wrong with this. They know who their clients are. The clients are those who pay them. Sadly neither the advertiser nor the media houses are seeing what is happening to the Indian investor / trader.

The number of people who are DIY wanting to ‘invest’ or ‘trade’ is not a big number at all. Remember our population is 135 crores. Now look at the investor numbers. Of course it is a small fraction of that population that invests in shares, but ticker channels need not worry about that. They ‘think’ they are catering to the ‘investors’.

Even among investors the numbers in direct equity is not high. You see a big shift to mutual funds (ad campaign works) and life insurance (the agents are well compensated). The biggest sales teams are those employed by banks, and banks do not think too much about which product to sell. Customer requirements are the last of their worries. They sell what suits them best.

So to focus on the DIY traders/investors makes no sense. However, there is a whole ecosystem out there – the brokers and fund managers who need to do some front running. The promoters and fund managers who need to do a pump and dump – and many a times even the channel does not know that it is being had.

But this is how most financial media properties are geared – everyone’s doing sites and apps and content about which shares to buy and sell and how to react to economic / earnings news. The most important thing is that the market (in most cases) has already reacted to the good news. Market always pulls the information – and hence when you hear good news the share price falls. It’s pretty crowded and when people try to stand out in crowds they think that they have a need to shout, post things in ALL-CAPS and engage in hyperbole. Of course all of them claim that they have viewership, well, they must be.

Concentrating on the traders means missing out the whole set of mutual fund investors, life insurance policy buyers, people consuming banking products, etc. Even serious investors do not watch the tickers -by the way the ticker is now used ONLY in the media. It is a product of the 1900s – early part!

The real wealth of this country is with the shareholders who do not trade! They need more programs discussing investing techniques, rupee cost averaging, reading and analysing investment books, authors, wealth creating investors, asset allocation, retirement strategies, staying calm in a panic, behavioral finance, etc. but channels concentrate on “best mutual funds to buy” and “top 20 shares to trade TODAY” etc. Of course the industry is now finding good alternatives – YouTube channels have far better content – it will not be long before ad revenues start looking there for their buck.

The financial main stream media is addicted to trading stories because they have urgency (BTST – they have a program which says Buy today sell tomorrow) and they’re entertaining! Also if I have given a buy call, the viewer will be glued to my channel to see when I give the sell call So repeat viewership is ensured, So what even if ultimately the content is unsatisfying to the millions of real investors who are here to create wealth? There is a relentless focus on analyst research calls, upgrades, downgrades, economic data releases, American data (oops) merger and acquisition buzz, etc. This is all highly interesting and I personally enjoy both consuming and creating this type of content as well. But it seems to be irrelevant for the real investor and this should not be the only thing on the web / airwaves. It is disproportionately dominant and almost irrelevant for the majority of the audience. There is a huge content arbitrage opportunity here. I hope more bloggers spot this opportunity. Even in YouTube people could do some serious stuff.

This looks like the typical good home food vs Junk food kinda fight/ story. Even if the ingredients look similar, you cannot grow healthy eating junk. You need good wholesome food – made in clean and non-commercial atmosphere.