Traditionally, companies have made major announcements before or after the close of trading so that all interested investors and analysts are apprised of the news before trading resumes in their stocks.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It's very important as a startup to get early press because, although it may not be a large number of people, having a 'Fast Company' story - some of those people that read it are going to be your next employees and hires, your next investors.
While it's wonderful that investors have access to all the data now available to them, it has become a full-time job to sift through it and separate out the valuable news from the useless noise.
Companies are always being bought and sold. The markets are always moving; you have to be on top of your position. And in the U.S., the market is never closed for more than three days. The only time the market was ever closed was 9/11. I think it may have been closed the whole week.
Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.
Financial news services and other media organizations get press releases 15 minutes before they are distributed to the general public, fueling a furious competition among the news services to rewrite them for their subscribers during their window of exclusivity.
News is important information that may influence your investments. Noise is talk or buzz or some headline that prevents you from seeing a story clearly. News is useful. Noise is a distraction. Calling what's noise and news after the fact is easy.
What we do is we test what works on Wall Street. And sometimes it is earnings momentum, and sometimes it's earnings surprises. Sometimes it's price-to-sales cash flow, and then we put together our stock selection models.
In most cases, the news is not really news. But in some cases, discoveries are made and should be listened to.
The news is staged, anticipated, reported, analyzed until all interest is wrung from it and abandoned for some new novelty.
In a world where companies increasingly know about their business in real time, it makes no sense that public reporting mostly follows the old quarterly schedule. Companies sit on vital information until reporting day, at which point the market goes crazy.