What are we supposed to do with this information? Anyone who needs to know will already know, it's just random numbers to the rest of us.
I quite like Collaterlie Sisters’s’s’s business reports.
https://youtu.be/Q9_fBDDTIuI
It's for twats on business trips watching TV in their hotel rooms.
In answer to the question (face value) its presumably a legacy of the pre-Internet news infrastructure
Radio and TV, offering to provide for those who couldnt be arsed to buy/read newspapers, puts headlines on the hr for the gen public, buries sports results in the middle of the programme, and sticks the financial just before the hour for those respective sections of the market
But even in those days, anyone working in finance would know what they needed from their job, and no-one else would give a fuck.
What are we supposed to do with this information?
Gain an understanding of the underlying strength (or weakness) of the UK economy.
Apart from times when either the stock market or the currency markets go a bit crazy and actually become news, we don't need day-to-day updates on their movements.
it's just random numbers to the rest of us
Are you familiar with the Shipping Forecast? It's morning and evening prayer.
Stock prices are an indicator of the strength of an economy?
Day-to-day reports on average rents would be more interesting.
It would be far more relevent to the average viewer (although they probably wouldn't need hear about it on the news in order to know about it), but it still wouldn't be interesting.
When I read history books I am well aware that my ancestors would have cared very much about the relative fluctuations in the prices of bread compared to stagnant wages and how the purchasing power of the pound in their pocket declined in the late 16th century... Jeez it ain't half tedious though, especially when I could be reading about Drake sailing round the world killing Spaniards and pinching their treasure.
Day-to-day reports on average rents would be more interesting
Well, indeed. They also did the stock market index on Newsnight routinely, yet Paxo felt it beneath him to read a short weather report. Knowing about the FTSE 100 is clearly a status thing.
Couldn't you say the same about many tems on the news?
I have no interest in football. A football fan has thousands of ways of getting the results.
I haven’t noticed them giving the FTSE recently, it seemed to die out after the 2008 global financial crisis.
< What are we supposed to do with this information? >
Accept daily confirmation that the great Market, rather than being a force for the general good, is systemically neurotic. I hope neurotic isn't a bannable word these days. If it is, I'll settle for flaky instead.
Those boring shipping forecasts can get in the sea.
Hear hear. Happily for me, my current domestic arrangements are such that the radio is never on at those times nowadays. Do they still play that idiotic dirge Sailing By?
Do they still encourage gambling on the horses on the Radio 4 news? And why not gambling on other activities?
Yes, Here's-Garry-with-the-Sport always has exciting horse tips for Radio 4 listeners.