Here is a CNBC talking head yesterday predicting a giant boom in the stock market in the face of a new bear market.
This guy is predicting that the market is going to surge to new highs to make bubble bulls rich by the end of the year.
It seems like an insane prediction, because the market smashed into a new bear market just the other week.
Why would someone say something like this?
Well here is an interesting interview done by Jeff Macke a few days ago.
Jeff Macke used to be a CNBC "Fast Money" stock market yeller.
Then he moved over to Yahoo Finance where he preached bull market gains during the stairway to heaven rally until he timely left in May.
What Macke says in this interview is that the role of a financial talking head is to simply reassure people when the stock market has big down days and talk them out of selling.
Telling people not to sell is good advice in a bull market during corrections, but it is advice that devastates people during a bear market.
This is why Jim Cramer's reputation and ratings got destroyed following the 2008 crash.
And today all Cramer still does is spit stock picks at his audience no matter what condition the stock market is in:
In this clip from just the other day Cramer told people to buy Facebook no matter what price it trades at.
What I think a real analyst should be doing is trying to figure out what is actually happening to the stock market instead of simply cheer leading it.
But Macke has been one of the most interesting and entertaining financial pundits in the past few years and after he left Yahoo Finance their videos became unwatchable.
He needs to come back to save that video network.
They need to do something and offer him a million dollars.
But Macke's candid comments here reveal the role that most talking heads you see on CNBC and other networks believe they play.
It explains why the CNBC guy in the first clip is so willing to feed the masses insane predictions in the face of a bear market.
And it explains why Cramer cannot stop yelling new stock picks at people and cannot stop telling people to buy Facebook even if it is a bear market.
Without new picks why would anyone watch?
But the reality is the masses eat it up and demand bull talk, because they do not want to hear the truth, much less figure out how to really invest in the financial markets for real and manage their money in a prudent way.
All bubble bulls want to do is buy and believe what they own will go up forever no matter what price they paid for the stocks they bought or how speculative they are.
They do not want to do any real work.
They just want to buy and then when things fall look for CNBC people to tell them something to make them push their doubts out of their mind.
If the CNBC talking heads told people the truth their ratings would collapse and their advertisers would flee.
So CNBC "programming" heads find people that believe in the market and are bullish on the market no matter what to talk to the masses and feed them what they want.
It is only the unique individual who is capable of adapting and adjusting to a bear market.
And there just are not enough such people for CNBC to create "programming" for and remain profitable.
Many people are fully invested in the stock market and feel trapped.
They are scared if they sell they will miss out on gains CNBC tells them are going to come.
But holding now in this market is causing them much distress.
On up days they feel relief, but on down days they feel sick to themselves - and deservedly so.
There is a simple solution to such misery though.
Even if they do not want to sell - all they have to do is hedge their positions.
But almost all bubble bulls are too lazy to do something like that as it requires thinking and planning.