{Read in 1:30 minutes} While informative and knowledgeable, the financial press is backward-looking rather than forward-looking, which means it has no predictive value for the future.
Journalists do a great job of describing what has already happened, but that’s known information, and as they say, hindsight is 20/20. Journalists can’t describe what will happen; it’s not their job to prognosticate the future. They make opinions about trends, but those opinions are not meaningful when it comes to managing portfolios.
{Read in 1:50 minutes} The federal government—”the Fed”—is interesting. It’s fun to talk about, much like a sporting event or celebrity gossip or the latest health scare. And it is just as much the subject of daily headlines as those news items. 
The United States Department of Labor (DOL) has set forth a new guideline, known as “401,” for investment houses. 401 will make it mandatory that their agents take a fiduciary role with all of their clients’ retirement accounts.