If the Markets Are So Great, Why Are Finance Sites Struggling to Attract Readers?

As markets continue to break record highs, the echelon of premier finance sites in America continues to undergo deleterious drawdowns in their traffic. Anyone who operates a finance site knows that lack of volatility is the death knell for traffic. People aren’t interested in reading about stocks, generally speaking, when markets are effervescently gliding towards new highs. They are, in fact, keenly interested in horrible news and/or rapidly declining equity prices.

According to data provided by Alexa.com, sites solely focused on finance have struggled, mightily, especially in recent months. Part of it has to do with boring markets — but another working theory is the recent news cycle dominated by politics.

And a look at an ETF representative of the VIX index.

Notice a correlation?

One my favorite market tells is the correlation between traffic spikes and market bottoms. Here is a look at the traffic at iBankCoin from July of 2015 to March of 2016. Markets bottomed, from a calamitous drop of more than 10%, which was the worst start to a new year on record, on February the 8th, 2016.

In short, we’re gonna need a market crash in order to reverse the insipid digital trends in finance

Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com