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Pastimes : CNBC -- critique. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daflye who wrote (2136)	1/10/1999 9:03:00 PM
From: Gary M. Reed	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 17683

A couple of points: On Friday, the nation's #1 online broker (Schwab) was completely out all morning. Website was completely down and getting orders in via phone was almost impossible too. With all of the various CNBC newspieces covering online trading and how online trading is affecting the market, wouldn't something like this be pertinent information for a news story? Or is it too touchy due to advertising ties with Schwab? Second, when we were towards the bottom of our recent correction (Dow 7600-8000), every time an analyst or market technician from Merrill Lynch came on, they vehemently proclaimed their bearishness on the market. All the way up to Dow 8500, each time they came on, their message was the same, "this market is terrible, use any strength to sell." Less than 3 months later, we are at new highs on the Dow and the Nasdaq. Why hasn't CNBC called Merrill on the carpet for their seriously flawed market call? They were downright ademant about their bearishness on the market (and they said the same thing during several interviews on CNNfn), yet no one has attempted to even comment on their blown call. Why? I say this in context to CNBC's (and CNNfn's) eagerness to bash Abby Joseph Cohen when we were in the midst of the correction. All of the hosts and commentators did not hesitate to bash Abby when she stood steadfast on her bullishness on the market when we were at 8000--a gutsy call to be sure. Her market call has since been proven correct, yet no apologies from those who bashed her each day during the downturn. Yet Merrill makes the blunder call of the year ("sell sell sell, market is going down") when we were around 8000, and yet no one on CNBC cares to poke fun at their blunderous call. Why the disparity? If you're going to bash one market analyst for a call (that ultimately turned out to be 100% right) then wouldn't it be sound to bash ML for their call which turned out to be 100% wrong? Or is bashing Merrill Lynch sacriligious at CNBC? In the future, it would be nice if we were a bit more objective in our decisions over who to bash and who to praise. Results should be all that matter. I just think it's strange that the largest brokerage firm in the country (ML) makes a huge call that turns out to be 100% wrong and CNBC doesn't even mention it, yet you guys were all too eager to bash Abby before her prediction even had a chance to be proven out. Maybe Goldman Sachs doesn't have an advertising account at CNBC.