STOCKS/MUTUAL FUND FURY: We're getting a moderate level of perturbed calls this morning from readers missing the one page of stocks and mutual funds listings we used to publish Tuesdays through Fridays in the business section. Instead, we are running a quickie strip of market summaries from the day before. And that's the linchpin phrase to remember: DAY BEFORE. It explains a lot. . . .
The Daily Breeze has gradually cut its market table listings from a high of three pages in the late 1990s to the quickie strip you see today. All listings are available through www.dailybreeze.com.
So how did it get to this point? And why did we do such a thing?
1) The growing pervasiveness of the Internet makes it possible to check any stock, any mutual fund at any time on a myriad of Web sites and sources. For investors, that has become the preferable way to track stocks and mutual funds. Why wait til morning when you can get it now?
2) Those big, gray pages of type eat up a lot of money and space. As newspapers must deal with a wider and more ferocious media landscape, we have to focus on those things we do best and most efficiently. That's clearly delivering local news and information, in print and online, and bringing the wider region and world to readers. Those stocks/mutual fund pages instead can be used for attractive, well-designed pages of useful information.
3) We live on the West Coast. By the time you open up the paper at 6:30 a.m. or later, the financial markets in New York are actively trading. Any market quotes from the DAY BEFORE are old news.
4) Web sites and 24/7 cable business news channels do a better job of delivering detailed market information. That's the new world we live in. In this case, acceptance is preferable to resistance.
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