Constant media attention has also encouraged
growing familiarity with the securities markets. There has never
been more information — and misinformation — available
to investors and potential investors. You can follow minute-by-minute
changes in the price of a stock on television and on the Internet,
in a way that only investing professionals could in the past.
And the unprecedented run-up in stock prices in the 1990s spawned
thousands of publications, television shows, and Web sites of
varying quality devoted to investing and personal finance.
Jeremy Siegel, The Wharton School 