The Sensex had a nervous breakdown, the stock market lost control of its sensex, sorry senses, and business TV channels needed immediate medical attention, to say nothing of their madcap, sorry midcap (whatever) anchors who until the afternoon of Monday February 10, 2008 had expended considerable energy recommending, but not precisely recommending but perhaps recommending, nevertheless, Reliance Power to TV customers, only to see a currency outage (forgive the pun). The charm of business TV anchors is that they often give ‘stock’ advice to investors seeking to invest or sell, in a jargon which says ‘uh’, knowing they have recommended nothing they can be held accountable for. For example, at least one influential business TV anchor, in his newspaper column last Monday morning, “guess”d that Reliance Power shares would “possibly settle around Rs 500-550 in the near term”. Guess? Possibly? Near term? We’ve heard of hedge funds (sorta) but this is called hedging your bets so carefully, the investor was wiser before consulting him. However, viewers tend to trust such equivocal advice, take it at face value and act upon it. Oh, by the way, Reliance Power closed at Rs 372.50. Guess in the nearest term, you possibly suffered considerable losses.Yesterday, after Reliance Power offered bonus shares to soothe the market’s and investors’ hurt feelings, the anchors were more circumspect, weighing their words as if choosing between a death or life sentence — well, there will be short term losses, long terms gains. But the damage had already been done. The TV business media belongs to a secret cabal where they observe certain codes of conduct only they follow, with impunity. They don’t have to reveal any interest they may have in a particular venture or from the investor’s point of view, stand by their word — you do, if you can fully understand them. Therefore, to “profit from it”, the viewer/investor must already know his or her business — in which case, why bother? Otherwise, you receive authoritative (and perhaps insider?) but unclear and at-your-own-risk advice on whether to buy, sell, hold in the short term, sell in the midterm and shift to techno in the long term depending on profitability, purchasability, the state of the decline ratio.Our expert advice: the media must heed outgoing SEBI Chairman M. Damodaran’s warning against the ‘anchor-investors’ (NDTV’s Walk the Talk). Will they, or must they be forced to? Monday was election day in Pakistan and a date with a tiger in a small village in West Bengal. Times Now news anchor: Shafiq Ahmed in Peshawar, tell us, what is going on in Pakistan?Shafiq: There is nothing going on. enthusiasm in Peshawar is low, no activities, very few people are going to cast their votes.Zee News anchor: So-and-so, tell us what was the mood in the village when the tigress wandered in?Zee correspondent: There was great hulchul, and tremendous excitement and activity as the entire village came out to hunt down the tigress (visual of people milling below a tree where the tigress sits with a full frontal grin). The tigress was sedated, fell into the lake and is now in hospital. Times Now: Hamid Mir in Rawalpindi, sum up the mood from 8 to 12 (huh?).Hamid: Very low (presumably from 8 to 12), not much voters. Behind me is the president’s palace where you can see two flags flying (can’t see a thing). That means the president is sitting inside, but the president is not sitting inside. Perhaps Hamid Mir should seek employment at a business TV channel?All news channels have sent their top foreign hands to Pakistan. They spent a fruitful morning on a tourist tour of sleepy polling booths. The BBC being BBC, put it best at 3.30 pm: “there is a slow but steady turn out.”shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com
