Opinion
By Steve Nicklas, 10-7-25
If you’re a nostalgic soul still reading The Wall Street Journal, in print edition worse yet, you should fold the pages of the paper into a neat square – to fit the bottom of a bird cage.
If you don’t have a bird, a cat litter box or a hamster cage works fine. That’s about what the once-storied newspaper is worth these days. If you don’t have pets, wrapping mullet in newspaper is a timely southern option.
Like most publications and broadcasts these days, a liberal bias has infected them with the uniformity of Covid. Other than a few conservative, a.k.a unbiased publications, wheezing but still standing (New York Post, The Washington Times, the Epoch Times), the rest are suited for pet litter boxes. Including the now-biased financial pages relied upon by investors.
And it’s not just how they cover the news. Worse yet, it’s what they don’t cover. When the WSJ refuses to cover something newsworthy, which doesn’t fit their liberal bias, the reader never knows about it. In the financial world, this is Bernie Madoff parlance.
Recent disappointments (other than the WSJ) are news channels CNBC and Bloomberg and Reuters. These used to be credible and reliable. Now, with their pervasive anti-Trump rhetoric, they have continued to poo-poo the meteoric rise of U.S. stocks, while choking on tariffs as an overriding concern.
Much of the financial media cheered as the April sell-off spiraled downward, feeding the frenzy. If you’ve followed my financial columns (and upcoming podcasts), you’ve been enlightened and enriched. I labeled the panic as the “tariff tantrum,” maintaining it would pass.
I highlighted technology stocks – particularly in the Artificial Intelligence space – before the late-to-the-dance herd piled into them. Now I favor small-cap stocks, of most sectors, which thrive when the economy is growing and interest rates are falling. Also convertibles can juice up a bond portfolio.
And don’t buy into the negative media narrative. The U.S. economy is growing at nearly 4 percent, while inflation is subsiding with lower oil prices. Sure, we’ll have dips and corrections in the markets, by as much as 20 percent in some cases.
But as a recalcitrant Federal Reserve moves into an “accommodative” mode, a blanket of calm often falls over the financial markets. Investors believe the Fed would cut interest rates at signs of distress, in a stimulative move.
When you sprinkle in tax cuts, de-regulation and trillions of investments into the U.S. economy, it makes for a tasty porridge. To top it off, the AI boom is only in the third or fourth inning by many estimates.
In my 30 years as a financial advisor, I’ve never seen a hand this good being dealt to investors. So turn off the TV and trash the publications (and ignore the media bias injected into your favorite online sites). Find a few outlets and voices (like Larry Kudlow and Charles Payne on Fox Business, for instance) you can trust. You’ll be better off financially for it.
Come to think of it, your parakeet might rebel if you put biased musings into its cage. Certainly, don’t put them into your brain.
Steve Nicklas is a financial advisor and award-winning columnist who lives in Nassau County. He can be reached at 904-753-0236 or at [email protected].
