Historians are taught to discriminate between primary and secondary sources. At the risk of oversimplification, primary sources amount to original history and secondary sources are comment. Financial markets accommodate a similar distinction. Primary sources are objective market prices - a statement of fact (even if those same prices are distorted by central bank action, the price remains the price). Secondary sources are comment - a subjective statement of opinion (for example: editorial from a publication such as The Financial Times will report the price of gold and quickly add that it?s a bubble). Given the 'drinking from a fire hose' nature of our web-enabled world, and the stubbornly finite number of hours in a day, the chances are that most consumers of financial news receive their commentary as secondary sources, filtered via somebody else's prejudices. Consumers of financial news are also surprised and prone to intellectual denial when they hear the suggestion from market participants that news typically follows the price, rather than the other way around.

David Fuller's view Wise words.