To: Ted David who wrote (1610 ) 9/3/1998 6:26:00 PM From: Thomas G. Busillo Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 17683
Ted, this may be bordering on "secrets of the temple" territory, but I'll ask anyway. How is it that the editors at CNBC choose which brokerage firm moves highlight pre-market? By way of a disclaimer - the whole sell-side analyst phenomena has long been a fascination of mine (I've always made the claim that a handful of motivated high-school students could produce a better work product than 80% of the sell-side analysts out there), but even more fascinating has been the media's handling of these characters. Nothing gets on CNBC by accident. There are persons off-camera exercising judgement. IMHO, at times it is so loose as to be irresponsible. For example, last Monday we had the "big" pre-market analyst move being the upgrading of MU from a "Buy" to a "Strong Buy" from Dan Niles at Robbie Stephens. Anyone who has been following MU over the last year knows that this man on this stock has just been a disaster. True to course, after popping to an open last Monday (8/24) over 31 MU hit an intraday low this past Tuesday of 20 9/16 - that would be a decline of roughly 50% in just 7 sessions intraday. But this morning, we get Maria Bartiromo right before the opening bell looking into the camera and mentioning that Robbie Stephens is speaking positively about MU and stating that it is on the low end of its trading range (duh). My question is who is responsible for making the decision to air those types of calls and how do you get them? Do you get calls from the media relations personnel at these firms? Clients of these firms with positions? What is it that forces whoever is responsible for supervising the on-air copy to just totally roll over and play dead when this type of call occurs? This morning, Maria B. blithely ignoried what any home viewer with a moderately good memory knows - the firm upped the stock only 8 sessions ago, it tanked over 50% from the open that morning, and now they're saying good things again. IMHO, if there is someone at your station responsible for reviewing the on-air feed on a daily or weekly basis, after viewing that particular report this morning they should be extremely dissatisfied that the report went on air in a manner that makes it look as if your station has no institutional memory or conscience. Why wouldn't questioning the editorial judgement of CNBC in ignoring the sell-off following the most recent call, in ignoring the underwriting relationships this firm has had with MU, in ignoring the fact that the stock has tanked BADLY since the firm hosted a semiconductor conference at which MU was a presenter (and no doubt some porfolio managers bought) in today's report be valid? This is only the most recent example. This past Monday Maria B. had another "canon fodder special" on Autodesk in which she was gushing about two upgrades, yet forgetting to mention the announcement of a recent planned acquisition AND a pre-warning about Asian revs. only days before. The stock opens north of 27 and by the end of the day ended up posting a loss. Today it closed @ 23 3/8. Wouldn't your station improve the quality of its broadcast by attempting to place more context around these calls? What is it that stops you from doing so? There are a lot of new investors in the markets who do rely on your station as a source of information. That type of no-frills headline reporting, especially in instances which scream out for context, does a great disservice to your viewers. I'd like to see it improve. Best wishes, Tom