The WSJ makes stock table cuts again

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by hughb, Nov 17, 2008.

  1. hughb

    hughb

    About a year ago they announced that they would only list the biggest 1500 stocks, today they say they are cutting it to 1000. I didn't really see the point of only listing 1500 stocks, so what is the point of only listing 1000? If they have to cut newsprint costs, they could just omit stock tables all together.

    Here's what really stuck in my craw and prompted me to post this:

    As far as I'm concerned, stock prices are THE most relevant news. The Journal considers stock tables to be analogous to printing a dictionary every day just in case somebody wants to look up a word. That's not how I use stock tables, I read through them, virtually line by line, to give me a different perspective on the market.

    Anyway, Barron's is offering a killer subscription deal that I will take. They still have complete stock tables and I can read them on Saturday nights.

    The end of an era. How many well-known fund managers today said that as children they would read the newspaper stock tables while other kids would read the comics? the next generation won't be saying that.
     
  2. lassic

    lassic

    do what the comic books did in the 90s
    stop using newsprint paper and start using glossy paper and hike up prices, justifying the hikes by saying "we are offering a better product."
     
  3. hughb

    hughb

    I'm the lone voice in the desert crying out for stock tables. I want my full and complete stock tables like we used to have back in the old days. Reading them on a computer screen just isn't the same experience.

    Back in the 90's when I didn't have two nickels to rub together, I was hand drawing my own charts, complete with an MACD calculation, and I got my data from stock tables. I had a stack of newspapers in my closet for historical data.

    Yesterday, the paper boy left the Sunday editon of the local paper at my door by accident, I haven't subscribed to the local paper in more than 15 years. I went to the business section just to see what it looks like now. It was a total of four pages long and it was mostly reprints from other news services. It had the prices of a few mutual funds and that was it. The business news consumer is demanding immediate information and they regard a print newspaper as yesterday's information, so there's really not much of a market for print business news anymore. As for me, I love my Wall Street Journal print newspaper. Coffee and a newspaper is heaven on earth.

    Now I wonder if they will eventually cut market data all together? One of the first things I read is the "Keeping Score: Stocks & Stock Markets" section, which is a diary of market data. Could it be headed for the chopping block too?
     
  4. hughb

    hughb

    Well, they removed the most widely held stocks from the Keeping Score section. I love this paper, in fact I just renewed for another year this morning, but if they are going to keep throwing out market data I will be forced to join the crowd and stop reading it.

    I noticed that very few respond to threads about print newspapers on here, has everyone gone digital?
     
  5. Who still needs newspaper quotes these days when you can get everything you need from the net? :D