I read a lot on the Internet and follow a lot of different news sources, so it’s nice to finally feel like I can believe something about a celebrity. Here’s what writer Neil Gaiman has to say about Angelina Jolie:
I like Angelina. She’s nice, very professional, and has a slightly goofy sense of humour. Last time I met her was November 2005, when she was doing the acting bit of Beowulf. Even then, it had already been reported in the papers that she had closed down production on Beowulf by walking off the set after a fight with Ray Winstone — two weeks before her first day on set. I realised that where she was concerned the press were happy to simply make up stuff that sounded credible. It didn’t need have to have any basis at all in reality.
Other than that, I’m assuming that everything else I read is crap. Neil Gaiman: America’s most trusted source of news.
Lately, the correlation between AAPL stock run-ups and actual news regarding Apple is zero. Whereas most of the time there is any actual news, even news that to me seems good for Apple, the stock goes down.
Which is something that I’ve been noticing for a while, and not just with Apple. It seems like the stock market responds to just about any news by punishing the company involved. Did you quarterly results meet analysts predictions? The stock goes down. Did it beat them by too much? The stock goes down. That’s just strange.
But what’s downright dumb is when nothing happens and the stock rises. How is that possible. So here’s my theory: good news does make stock prices go up. But not when most traders first hear about it. To them, anything in the press is bad, so anytime they read about a company, the stock goes down. But a week later when they talk to somebody smart enough to know what’s going on, the price starts creeping up.
The reason for the sudden dip is that there’s a small but significant number of day traders that are nothing but reactionary lemmings. On the other hand, there are lots of smart people out there who slowly begin to fill in the larger mass of traders in on the good news. The thing is that the lemmings all hear about the news at the same time, but the word of mouth filters out slowly over a few weeks.
What do you think?
Dear Newspapers,
I know you’re threatened by the Internet. It’s completely understandable. And I know you’re interested in getting in on some of this sweet blog action. No rules, no fact-checking, no standards. It’s a sweet life.
So welcome to the world of blogging. Enjoy yourselves! But do me a favor: if you’re going to call part of your website a blog, you have to provide a feed for it. And no, a feed for your entire site doesn’t count. A blog is an informal, irregularly scheduled collection of writings that you can subscribe to. Mixing that with your wire service articles isn’t cool.
Thanks,
Jemal
p.s. The same goes for podcasts.