Headlines

 One of the things about the world we live in is that information bombards you.  There is so much information that if you try to read a lot of it, you spend your day quickly and get through a small amount.  So, I, and I think most people, scan headlines and pick the topics to read about.

The headlines of topics I don't read still leave an impression, and based on what I do read, probably a misleading one.  For example, there was a headline today about how builder's sentiment dropped drastically because interest rates were up.  The story was accurate I think showing sentiment dropped from over 80 to around 70, the biggest drop in many years.  What sort of hurt the impression from the headline was that anything over 50 was a positive indicator.

So builders went from very, very optimistic to only very optimistic.  Not what the headline implied.

Its hard to find a positive headline because I guess negative headlines grab more attention.  Oil prices have been dropping because the cut off of Russian oil has been low impact.  So right under a headline pointing that out, there was another headline about an analyst for an oil industry monitor saying the cut off of Russian Oil could be the biggest shock to the Oil supply ever experienced.  It had a lot of math about how much Russia exports and yes if it all got cur off, it would be pretty drastic, but the reality is very different.

So the problem is that just scanning headlines, like we pretty much have to do will leave and overall negative picture of what's happening.  That's not accurate.  There are always problems or potential problems but overall things are actually going pretty well.

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