Recently the media once again reported “facts” without context or explanation, when both were seriously needed.
First, they all reported the White House fable that Donald Trump, Jr.’s meeting with various Russians before the election just involved a discussion about adoption of children (oh yes, and getting some dirt on Hillary). None of them bothered to point out the obvious, namely, that neither the Russian go-betweens nor Donald Jr. had any actual interest in the adoption of children. When did you ever hear any Trump express concern for families who want to adopt children? What Donald Jr. and the Russians were discussing was what the Russians had to do to get the US to lift the sanctions that Obama had imposed on them because the Russians ended the popular (in the US) program for American families to adopt Russian children.
Clearly, all those Russians didn’t show up with offers from Russian officials to help the Trump campaign beat Hillary for free. They wanted a commitment from the Trump campaign that if Trump won, he would lift the sanctions. Yet for some reason, and they will have to provide it, the media and its pundits let all this slide.
Second, as the stock market has continued to rise over the last few months and President Trump claims responsibility for that, the media and its pundits have failed to point out that during this period the Federal Reserve has been slowly raising interest rates. And it promises to keep doing that. When interest rates rise, the value of bonds which have already been issued drops. So if you are a smart investor who has put money into bonds to protect yourself against the low returns in other investments, and you learn that the value of your bonds is going to start dropping, you start moving your money out of bonds into stocks. At the least, you start buying stocks with your new money so as to hedge against the coming drop in bond value.
Also, some of the financial pundits or the media might have mentioned that the rise in the stock market in recent months has been on very low volume. Historically, this has never been a good sign. It means that the market is being moved by a small number of trades rather than the convictions of lots of investors doing a lot of trading. The current market is at least as much of a sign of a coming retreat as it might be of excitement about President Trump saying he will do stuff he won’t be able to do. But once again, the media and its pundits seem fearful of challenging the Trump fables about the world around them.