Big investment ideas tend to be contrarian in nature. In order to be contrarian, you have to think differently from the crowd. In order to recognize a contrarian opportunity, you still need to have some sense of what the crowd is thinking.
In total, these news and commentary shows are very useful for figuring out what the crowd is thinking, or at least the hot money crowd. The trick is not to be lulled into agreeing with everything they say, which is way easier said than done.
That’s kind of what I was thinking. As far as “hot stocks” go, by the time its on tv the stock is old news anyways. I’m more interested in just being informed, and typical news broadcasts don’t focus enough on the business side of things for my taste. Just something I can put on after work for an hour or two and get all caught up on the days events.