Investor's Business Daily Mocks Diane Sawyer's Fear of Bull Markets

May 22nd, 2007 9:47 AM

Back on April 23, as NewsBuster Scott Whitlock noted at the time, ABC’s Diane Sawyer fretted about the supposedly sky-high stock market. “Is this the thrill before the meltdown?” she panicked. “What should you do this morning to protect your money?” ABC's on-screen graphic ridiculously wondered: "Is Unstoppable Market Good or Bad?"

Today, an Investor’s Business Daily editorial mocks Sawyer’s Chicken Little approach. “We’re still waiting for the ‘meltdown’ that ‘Good Morning America’ stock guru Diane Sawyer was warning us about a month (and 600 Dow points) ago, when she devoted a segment to what we should do ‘to protect our money.’”

An excerpt from today’s editorial, “Diane Doesn’t Like the Market (Pass It On):

Hearing what passes for market analysis these days, we don't know whether to laugh or cry. Laugh, because so many are scared into keeping their powder dry, or cry because they're missing out on so much.

We don't know how else to put it: The media are not only biased in how they cover the stock market and economy, they're oblivious to the relationship between the two....

We thought of the disconnect again over the weekend, as we surveyed what was obviously another strong week for stocks but noted that most of the coverage on the business pages dwelled on, yes, gas prices, the housing market ("American Nightmare," howled one headline) and the boom in corporate buyouts by private-equity firms. This last development, we learned, was "coming at the expense of . . . average investors as well as workers, lenders and perhaps the economy as a whole."

Yet here we are with the market's most important benchmark — the S&P 500 index — getting ready to take out its early-2000 high, as the Dow has done already.

Guess we're still waiting for the "meltdown" that "Good Morning America" stock guru Diane Sawyer was warning us about a month (and 600 Dow points) ago, when she devoted a segment to what we should do "to protect our money."

Savvy investors, of course, will file the money that's being withheld from the market on Diane's advice under the heading "dry powder for future rallies."

But that doesn't make it any less sad that many investors have missed the latest move because they are fed a diet of negative news and listen to people who wouldn't know a worldwide economic boom if they saw one.