Stock market in the daily newspaper is tricky. Because: The prices are from yesterday. There are new ones today. And tomorrow. What’s important? Mood? Yesterday’s? Exact index level? Change? Absolute? Relative? Trend?
I had a look at the front-page indexes. In all the daily newspapers. The FAZ doesn’t have one. In the FTD, NZZ, NN, NZ, and RP: trend arrows. For the day before yesterday to yesterday. Hmm. The FTD and NN got my hackles up once before. The NN and NZ only show the absolute change. Not so good for comparing.
The Handelsblatt, International Herald Tribune, SZ, Wall Street Journal, and Die Welt use triangles. Triangles are better than trend arrows. Because they don’t slope. And they don’t pretend to be a trend. The WSJ doesn’t use algebraic signs. (Not visible here. But here.) Ouch.
The Handelsblatt has the largest triangles. Across the page. Not good for reading. But okay for picking up yesterday’s mood. The WSJ has small triangles. Too small to create a mood. And hard to read. The triangles in Die Welt are even smaller. Too small.
Graphics from left to right as mentioned in the text, all from 2011-11-29.
