Stocks 60: Minutes ON WALL STREET

You know it is going to be a bad day, the old story goes, when you get to the office and Mike Wallace is waiting for you. Maybe not. Three North Texas State University finance professors decided to test that hypothesis. They tracked the stock prices of 13 companies that were featured on the CBS show 60 Minutes during the past five years. Their initial assumption, says Associate Professor Wallace Davidson, was “that if Mike Wallace rakes you over the coals, your stock would go down.”

Instead, the shares of the 13 companies did 12% better, on average, than the rest of the stock market for 15 days after the show aired, even though only one of the firms had been portrayed favorably. “I can only assume the old adage is true,” chuckles 60 Minutes Producer Don Hewitt. “It doesn’t matter what you print about me, so long as you spell my name right.”