“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal, 17th century French philosopher
“Based on what I’m reading a crash is imminent.”
“I’m worried if X party wins the mid-terms, the market is going to tank.”
“The Houthis just attacked Saudi Arabia.”
“None of this makes sense. I can’t believe the market is up.”
Many investors have asked some version of the same question this year: How can stocks be having a great year when the news cycle is so dire?
The answer is that financial markets don’t care about what’s streaming on the front page of the news. It doesn’t care about politics, partisan noise, or government dysfunction.
Media outlets have figured out that leading with doom, fear, and catastrophe sells ads. More eyeballs, opens, and clicks equals more money. Most people don’t understand they are the product…
Source: Media Cloud, U.S. CDC, Global Terrorism Index (9/23/26)
The above graphic shows the causes of death in 2023 (left column) vs. what various media outlets covered during the same year. There’s a saying in modern media; “if it bleeds, it leads.”
Recently, several folks have proclaimed AI will end humanity. Looking at the past 60+ years, these existential warnings seem to recycle every few years…
Nuclear war. Population explosion. Ecological collapse. Nuclear war again. The ozone hole. Y2K. Climate change. Pandemic. Bees. AI extinction.
Every decade has its own end-of-the-world cover story, and every decade we keep chugging along. Boring, likely outcomes of slow incremental improvement don’t sell magazines. The media has figured out selling fear is profitable.
Source: Time Magazine (9/23/26)
The above graphic shows the cycle of headlines that predicts the end of civilization. These headlines are great for selling magazines, but not so great for those trying to make rational financial decisions.
If financial markets do not care about the daily news cycle, what does it care about?
This is obvious but worth mentioning because it’s easy to forget; a share of stock represents ownership in a real business. Not a referendum on who’s in office, not a scoreboard for your group chat’s opinions, not a reaction to whatever’s leading the 6 o’clock news. A share of stock is an ownership claim on a company’s profits. When profits/earnings go up, the underlying businesses producing those profits tend to increase.
Source: Creative Planning (9/23/26)
The above chart shows earnings per share for the S&P 500 (since 2016). Earnings growth has been on a heater over the past three years fueled by the AI buildout. Not coincidentally, the S&P 500 has seen one of the greatest multi-year runs in history.
Full-year 2026 earnings growth is tracking towards 30%, more than double the 15% growth expected at the start of the year The S&P 500 is up roughly 13% on a total return basis year-to-date through mid-September.
We’ve never seen earnings growth this strong outside of post-recession rebounds. There was no recession, rather an unprecedented AI-driven boom.
That’s the story. Businesses made a lot more money this year. The market did what it’s supposed to do and repriced the value of the underlying businesses higher. It had nothing to do with who’s expected to win the mid-terms, what your neighbor thinks is coming, or what some talking head on CNBC predicts about the next big crash.
The news business isn’t in the news business
Major outlets don’t cover the world in proportion to what happens in it. They cover it in proportion to what gets watched. Rare, dramatic risks get the airtime. Mundane, compounding positives — a company beating earnings for the eleventh straight quarter — doesn’t hit as hard.
If you’re building your view of the world — or your portfolio — from the daily news cycle, you’re going to drive yourself crazy (and probably make some pretty bad investment decisions).
Absorb less, filter more
Every investor’s development runs the same arc: you start by trying to absorb everything, and if you last long enough, you end up ignoring almost everything. That’s not laziness — it’s the natural evolution of an astute investor. The job was never to consume every piece of information, rather, identify the signals amongst the sea of daily noise.
It sounds extreme in the digital age, but the instinct to unplug; turn off the news, ignore the noise, go somewhere quiet, can offer an edge for the investor. Less input, better decisions.
The market wasn’t confused this year. A lot of investors were. The underlying businesses made more money than expected this year and stocks adjusted higher.
Once you realize mainstream news and professional wrestling run on the same business model, the world and financial markets start to make more sense.
For help on building an information filter (knowing what to pay attention to), shoot us a note at [email protected].
