Financial journalism gets it wrong

Financial journalism covers what exactly? Looking at the pages of most of the national papers it seems to be focused on two main columns; the market round-up - that is, the UK equity market, bonds and commodities not being mentioned at all (nor are ETFs) - and the stock pick (whether it's called Tempus, Questor, or whatever).

And it's completely wrong.

What is the key to portfolio returns? It's not stockpicking. It's not trading. It's asset allocation - and this is something hardly anyone reports on at all in the consumer press. Look at websites and you'll find again the emphasis on stockpicking and individual equities (an honourable mention has to go to Motley Fool here for having more discussion of strategic issues, even though I don't think Motley Fool UK is a patch on the US service).

Of course proper asset allocation treads on a lot of people's toes, because residential property and cash savings are part of the portfolio, as well as equity and bond instruments. The newspapers and 90% of the finance sites divide these up - 'investment' and 'savings' for instance are two separate things.

But it seems sad that there's no top-down, integrated view. And since there are no discussions of the overall subject of portfolio management in the press, people are left with the dumb idea that the route to success is picking a handful of 'tenbaggers'. Which is, admittedly, much more exciting than finding the right balance between different geographies and asset classes - but much less likely, too.