In alt.home.repair, on Thu, 27 Aug 2015 06:07:54 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 8:28:46 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
OT, way OT

Why do they give the Dow Jones, the S&P, and sometimes the NASDAQ all
the time on the news? Who wants to hear it?.

ISTM if one is an investor, in the market for the long hall, keeping
your stocks long enough to make gains long term, it doesn't matter what
stocks do on one day. They could report it every week or month and
that would be plenty.

And if you're a speculator, what does it matter what an average of many
stocks has done? It's what the stock you might buy or sell does that
matters to you. So you still have to check on them.

And yet even mid-morning, -day, and -afternoon 6 minute newscasts at the
top of the hour give partial days' results and number of shares traded.
Why do people care?

A better argument than "who cares" would be that it would seem
anyone who does care almost certainly has a smart phone where you can
see not only the indices, but also your actual stocks. Giving the
updates made more sense decades ago, when there was no easy way
for most people to have any idea of what the markets were doing.

Not quite true. The stock prices were printed in the paper every day.
Even my small town (50,000) paper printed in the 50's, iirc, the local
stocks and some big national ones, and Indianapolis in the 60's printed
almost all of them. More than enough for an "investor". and as to
speculation, the vast majority of those who you might be bidding against
were in the same situation.

And if you were a serious spectulator, even as far back as the 30's I
think, you could go to a stock broker and sit in the room with the
tickertape and read the latest prices as they came over the wire.
Before the web, and probably still, at some brokers there was a
"tickertape" running in lights in a 14" high array across the wall. in
that room.

Today, it's mostly just a holdover thing on routine days. On

I wonder if they'll get rid of it in my lifetime. I want to hear more
about who Laura is cheating on her husband with.

days where the market is making a big move, then it's certainly
news worthy.

As a side note, for some what the indexes are doing is all that
matters. You can invest in and trade the actual indexes too.

Well that's a point

Dean, my browser is stuck but I'll read your url soon.