First of all, take moment and read what follows.  I’ll comment at the end.

In what may be a surprising twist at the end of a strong year in the market, Boston Consulting Group found that fully 46% of investors were pessimistic about equity markets for the next year. 

The reading is up from 32% a year ago, and just 19% in 2015. 

As global equity benchmarks have rallied, more investors also see the market as too expensive. 

Fully 68% of respondents said the equity market is “overvalued,” more than double the 29% of respondents who thought as much last year. 

And nearly 80% of investors describing themselves as market bears cited “overvaluation” as the reason for their market pessimism, the survey found.

So, why the title?

Because this report of the report makes NO attempt to define the words or terms that I’ve bolded.

Exactly who were the investors?

How did the survey define pessimistic?

Equity markets are defined as only U.S. markets, or just any market?

Too expensive as compared to what?

Overvalued means what?  Is it the same as too expensive?  I guess they don’t want us to know!!

Market bears would seem to mean pessimistic, but does it?  It would certainly depend on how the question was asked.

Without the clear understanding of the words used in the survey, and better yet a copy of the actual survey, how are you supposed to make heads or tails from what it presented?

I don’t think you can.  As I said, fake news!

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for the cable news outfit CNN. 

Multiple accusations of airing “fake news” stories (with several editors, reporters and producers fired as a result), veiled threats to individual Reddit.com users, and a couple of embarrassing undercover videos from Project Veritas that showed CNN producers themselves admitting their own news is “mostly bull—-“ are just a few of the gaffes, unforced errors, and outright falsehoods that have dogged CNN of late.

In response, viewers seem to be voting with their feet.   And doesn’t that seem logical?

According to Adweek.com, for the final week of June CNN’s prime time shows even managed to draw fewer viewers than decades-old reruns of “Yogi Bear”, “Full House” and “Friends”.   And I sure as heck know which ones are more entertaining.

The chart below tracks the steep decline in viewership among the coveted 25-54 demographic group.

So, is “fake news” the problem or is the real problem “news” itself?

It seems to me that the news has done a couple of things:  first of all, it’s basically all negative news.  I’m hard pressed to ever get to see anything positive, uplifting, or self-affirming anymore.

If it’s not someone getting shot, the news doesn’t seem to care.

And second, it’s become not so much “news” per se, but opinion disguised as news.

Just give the news in a straightforward, unbiased, and complete way.  Let me make up my own mind about what “opinion” I want to have about it.

That’s my opinion, and it’s not “news” at all.