Buying individual shares on the basis of what an analyst says on the box - presumablylong after he has told his institutional clients - is a mug's game, writes John Gapper

The highlight for me of the launch of the Fox Business channel a week ago was when the sound went off as Ivanka Trump displayed the jewellery collection she is selling at her new Madison Avenue store.

Donald's daughter was a guest on the first outing for Happy Hour, an evening show on the US cable channel filmed in the Bull and Bear bar at the Waldorf Astoria. The hosts were Cody Willard, a long-haired hedge fund manager, and Rebecca Gomez, a pneumatic brunette in a short turquoise dress.

The absence of voices did not matter, for one still got the message. Money! Enterprise! Laughter! Babes! Even a double- barrelled blast of Jim Cramer and Maria Bartiromo, the manic stock promoter, on Fox's rival CNBC could not match this cocktail.

By the time the sound came back on, the hosts had moved on to a "quick shots" panel segment that covered in rapid succession why more golf courses were needed in Afghanistan, whether women prefer cowboys or businessmen in bed and why you should take exercise to avoid depression. It was mind-boggling. Had they been drinking? Had I?

In preparation for the Fox launch, CNBC had drenched itself in patriotism and pro- business rhetoric. Fox Business though has News Corporation's unique brand of hooch.

"This is the man who totally brought Main Street to Wall Street," said one anchor as she introduced an interview with Charles Schwab, founder of the eponymous retail broker.

Well, not totally. Americans directly invest far more in stocks and bonds than when Schwab opened his first branch in 1975. Some 60 million US households now own equity compared with 16 million in 1983.

Undaunted by Black Monday of 1987, they have poured money into mutual funds and individual securities. The forces behind this change are undiminished.

Companies are still shedding defined-benefit pension schemes and pushing their employees into 401(k) individual retirement plans, which offer a choice of mutual funds, while investing has become more accessible.

Then there is television. CNBC reaches 88 million homes, but averages only about 250,000 viewers during the day.

Advertisers like it, though, since the average CNBC-watcher has a net worth of $1.5 million. Fox wants to attract a wider audience, believing there is an untapped desire for business infotainment (hence Happy Hour).

Wall Street though is playing hard to get. For a brief shining moment in the late 1990s, it seemed as though investment was being democratised. Wall Street banks merged with retail brokers and stock analysts were everywhere on CNBC, telling day traders what to buy. Then the internet bubble burst and the Wall Street scandals emerged.

The lesson for Wall Street was that retail investors are more trouble than they are worth. They bring scrutiny and regulation while the institutions - hedge funds, private equity funds and private placement investors - pay bigger fees and like privacy.

Goldman Sachs, unashamedly elite, is the firm to match.

So Wall Street has turned away from Main Street, aided by technology. The rise of derivatives and structured finance has created asset classes that are impossible to quantify without a computer (and hard even with one, as subprime mortgage investors know).

As Fox Business took to the air, preaching its gospel of democracy and bullishness, its anchors were confronted by a 140-point fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, prompted by a Treasury- endorsed super-fund to bail out structured investment vehicles holding $400 billion of collateralised debt obligations.

After a stab at explaining what "it means for your mortgage", they moved on.

Even an investor who confines himself to buying shares based on Cramer's stock tips is hopelessly outgunned. He may now be able to make a trade online rather than by phoning up a broker, but he is up against a battery of hedge fund quantitative traders whose computers execute trades in milliseconds.

So what is the investor with a 401(k) plan to do? He should start by turning off the television set, or at least by treating Fox Business and CNBC as news and entertainment rather than investment advice.

There is value to spreading the news that money matters and people have to take more responsibility for saving, but the signal-to-noise ratio on a business channel in terms of investment decision-making is low.

Buying individual shares on the basis of what an analyst says on the box - presumably long after he has told his institutional clients - is a mug's game. The wisest things to do - spread your money across funds, particularly low-cost index funds; buy and hold; consult a fee-based adviser, etc - do not require you to watch talking heads and tickers.

Come to think of it, Fox Business is on to something. CNBC, despite its on-screen warnings not to take Cramer's stock tips over-seriously, has a professional mien. You could almost believe, watching it, that you are getting the inside track on what Wall Street is really doing.

There is no such illusion during Happy Hour and that has a bracing honesty to it. You will not discover much about structured finance here, but you can see Ivanka Trump in a Manhattan bar. At least you know where you are.