Zackcast Insights
Insights
Original explainers from our desk on news literacy, market language, and how to read data releases. Written for this site — not summarized or mirrored from other publishers.
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The economic indicators behind the headlines
Inflation, jobs, and growth prints drive markets for a day and get misread for a week.
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What actually moves a stock price on a given day
Most single-day moves have little to do with the news story sitting next to them.
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Reading an earnings report in fifteen minutes
The primary document is shorter than the coverage about it. Here is the order to read it in.
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How to spot a machine-generated news article
Synthetic articles are fluent, confident, and specifically wrong. Fluency is no longer evidence of effort.
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What a correction tells you about a newsroom
Corrections look like failures. Read properly, they are the strongest quality signal a publication emits.
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Why the same story shows up under ten different headlines
Wire copy, syndication, and headline testing explain most of the duplication in your feed.
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How to vet a news source you have never heard of
A ten-minute audit that separates a small real newsroom from a content farm wearing one as a costume.
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Using market data tools without mistaking data for advice
Quotes, charts, and watchlists are inputs to a decision. They are not the decision.
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How to evaluate any news app — including this one
Aggregation and journalism are different jobs. Problems begin when a product blurs which one it is doing.
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Building a calmer news diet
You almost certainly do not need more sources. You need rules about attention.
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What “beat expectations” actually means
Earnings headlines sound precise. They describe a comparison against a moving target — and the target is negotiable.
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How to read a headline without getting fooled
Headlines are written to win a click. Here is how to extract the claim underneath one.
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Our editorial standards
What we publish, what we refuse to publish, and how to hold us to it.