If you are going to make a habit of watching shows like Fast Money, MAD Money, Squawk Alley, etc., it is important to remember the motivations of the show and the network.

Remember that you are watching a television show. Sure there will be moments where you can “learn something new,” or become a more informed citizen, but always remember the goal of the TV show is maintain and hopefully increase viewers.

A couple of things about these “market related/business” shows.
1. They love the bears. Despite the fact markets are statistically much more likely to be bullish, these shows love guests and analysts that are bearish. These shows disproportionately trot out “experts” that confident the markets are going to plummet next week, next month, next quarter, etc.
2. They love high activity trading. Never mind that the average investor tends to correlate better returns with fewer trades, these shows will be recommending investors Buy MCD in January and Sell in March.
3. They sell trading and speculation as investing. Speculation should never be used interchangeably with investing. These programs often promote trades based on expected price movements over short-term periods. Over short-term periods price movements are very much sentiment and momentum driven which is inherently speculative.

Excitement, fear, and panic bring in viewers; therefore CNBC and the like happily sell excitement, fear, and panic (their favorite) every day.

I often recommend clients not watch any of the “investing” TV shows, because all too often the shows are promoting some course of “action” when the best course is “inaction.”

I will throw one bone out to NBR the Nightly Business Report on PBS each night. NBR is a great 30 minute recap of the day’s market and business events. Also NBR tends to have significantly more guests with good ole boring investing advice, and not so much fire and brimstone.