Kirk,
Thank you so much for the respect for my wife and her colleagues in the ICU. I hope that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.
"Now, the sources that should be trusted (especially for financial news) have fallen under the spell of glamour versus factual reporting."
Sadly, I have to agree that this is a widespread issue.
But this isssue is the RESULT of a deeper problem: The rise of digital advertising as the driver of news, including financial news. Vanessa Otero does an excellent job of showing exactly how the advertising algorithms are unable to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the good journalism from the junk news (a pithy phrase, on loan from Otero).
There are exceptions, since subscription revenue has helped the Financial Times, as noted here:
https://digiday.com/media/long-term-planning-ft-now-1-million-paying-re…
Perhaps the solution lies with you and me as readers. We MUST be willing to pay up for subscription services since the financial incentives encourage research, not fluff and nonsense.
"Investors are desperate for intelligent information and analysis regarding a variety of other "vectors." It's out there, you just have to look."
Any suggestions? I would LOVE to read some good old-fashioned industry reports that describe the companies and trends within a specific sector, asset class, or geography: energy, savings and loans, municipal bonds, inflation, applied artificial intelligence, R&D trends in China vs. the U.S., et cetera, et cetera.
Sources I like:
DataTrek
Jim Grant's Interest Rate Observer (though I can't afford it)
Fundametalis
FactSet Earnings Insight
What's missing are the in-depth industry reports that aggregate all of the data in the sector, making projections and explaining the assumptions. I've written these reports myself and I know them when I see them. Maybe this stuff is just too expensive to publish online.
These are the reports that I used to get when I worked on the buy-side, and I know that they are expensive and time-consuming to produce, relying on people with specialized knowledge and expertise. But this is exactly what you expect when you INVEST in research and not just in "Actionable Ideas," a concept which is all the rage on financial media that caters to individuals.
Okay, okay. Rant over.
Thanks for listening.
Rob