Wired Magazine as a Technology Market Barometer
I received this months Wired yesterday. I sat down for a few moments to have a flick through, and noticed two things. Firstly, it has a nice swish glossy cover, and secondly, it’s fat–just like the dot.com days.
That got me thinking. I wondered how Wired’s page count might reflect the technology industry. So I plotted page count against the Nasdaq, and received this surprising result.
Other than a few missing magazines, I’ve got most of the collection since 1996. You’ll note that the Nasdaq (red) lags tracks Wired’s page count (blue) by a few months. I’m not suggesting you go an buy technology shares, but gee, I’m thinking the reports of money pumping back into technology companies might just be true given the big up-tick in this months page count (294).
Update: Looks like someone else had the same idea.
Update 2: Nasdaq graph has been corrected as per Rex’s suggestion in the comments.
Update 3: Here is a CSV file with the data I used. If you can add any page counts, or use the data to calculate new results, please let me know.
Update 4: As per his comment below, Tyson has used the CSV file to do further analysis, and finds “that high page counts (> 250) are all either attributable to a surging tech market or the approach of christmas (Nov/Dec).” Check out his blog for the details.
December 4th, 2005 at 1:37 am
Jim Cramer of Mad Money has been calling for a tech rally for several months. Its good to see this backing that up!
December 4th, 2005 at 11:00 am
I think you’re overlooking the “Wired is a christmas whore” phenomenon, which probably largely accounts for the increase in magazine length this month. There is a noticeable peak about 12 months ago (hard to tell x-axis scale from the chart, but it looks like about 12 slope changes back) which I would guess corresponds to last year’s christmas whore edition too.
December 4th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
The NASDAQ graphic is backwards. It is, really, check this out:
http://marketwatch.nytimes.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp?sid=3291&time=10yr&uf=0&x=56&y=12
The NASDAQ was in the 1,000 level 10 years ago and it is in the 2,000 level now, that’s why when I saw your graphics it looked strange. In yours looks like it is LOWER now than 10 years ago.
So… any more predictions on tech? >-/
December 4th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
Sure sign of a boomlet underway…
…the business and technology magazines are getting thicker again. The latest issue of Wired magazine is 294 pages, Forbes is 280. Not in the phonebook-sized range yet, but noticeably heavier than they’ve been in a while.
Apparently, Ads…
December 4th, 2005 at 3:26 pm
Rex - Thanks for the correction. When I imported the data from Yahoo I forgot to correct the descending numbers to ascending. I’d now corrected this in the new image.
Wired doesn’t trend up before the Nasdaq, it just tracks it now.
December 4th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
Craig.
I agree and I did consider that. Except, the last time the magazine exceeded this months page count was December 2000 (418).
Last Christmas it was only 142, with November 04 being 230.
December 4th, 2005 at 4:35 pm
Do you mind sharing the data itself? In particular I wonder what a linear regression of the two sets of data would show rather than a raw plot.
December 5th, 2005 at 6:14 am
I’ve also noticed they’re “moving up” in the world - ads this month for Lexus / Rolex / etc.
December 5th, 2005 at 8:57 am
theres also the trendwatcher which a friend of mine is using to track the popularity of a company he has shares in .. click here to see more… Hunter hall investment
December 5th, 2005 at 1:02 pm
[…] (via Boing Boing) A plot of the Wired Magazine page count and the Nasdaq index. Coincidence? or not?. Hmmm […]
December 5th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
It says volumes about Wired. It still rocks!
December 6th, 2005 at 3:21 am
I’ve examined the “christmas whore” phenomenon. The evidence for this seasonal effect is pretty good and seems to include November as well as December.
December 6th, 2005 at 5:38 am
[…] Wired magazine as a technology market barometer. As the number of pages increase and decrease, so does the Nasdaq. I do recall noticing the heft of the latest issue when I got it in the mail. (via waxy) […]
December 6th, 2005 at 6:07 am
Wired Magazine: the Barometer
Richard Giles put up this overlay of the pagecount of issues of Wired since 1996 and the performance of the Nasdaq over the same time period.
There has been lots of writing and analysis on Wired as a cultural barometer for all things tech. Here are…
December 13th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
[…] [Nota: hace unos días vi un análisis que relacionaba la cantidad de páginas de Wired con el valor del índice Nasdaq del mes (aquí)…] […]