* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The year 1929 may not have been the most auspicious time to start trading shares, and yet …
The year 1929 may not have been the most auspicious time to start trading shares, and yet …
Today the Casablanca Stock Exchange, which started life the year of the Wall Street Crash, is the second largest in Africa, by value of shares traded, after Johannesburg, according to the World Federation of Exchanges’ 2011 report.
This snippet from a Thomson Reuters Foundation financial reporting workshop at Morocco's MAP news agency in Rabat may not be headline news.
But it's an example, if one were needed, of trainers, in this case myself and Nick Phythian, learning from participants.
Maghreb Arab Presse, a state news agency, says it wants to reinvent itself commercially and is keen to attract new paying clients, particularly to its economic service.
We were teaching a group of journalists from MAP, with a split of about 50-50 between financial journalists and general news writers. Well, when I say we were teaching, it would be more accurate to say that we were helping them teach one another the basics of economic and financial news.
And while we were happy to guide the discussions, it soon became apparent there was more than enough knowledge already in the room. Our role was to get the participants sharing and exchanging notes!
Our 1929 breakthrough came on Day Three. After two days of ethics, story structure and general economics, this was the tipping point.
The timetable, ominously for the general reporters, showed we were set to take a dive into company reporting, shares and exchanges. The challenge, with one participant in particular, was to help her look beyond the numbers to the story.
Nick had the idea of asking the financial team to prepare a short presentation to the rest of the group about the Casablanca Stock Exchange, so that we could use it as a platform for discussion. They delivered, revealing among other things, the opening date of the exchange, a date we seized upon as an example of a good peg for a softer story.
From there, we plunged into the world of company reports and the one figure that really matters – net income Company statements, like politicians, can often be economical with the truth. A reporter who knows what they are looking for can, with the help of stock market disclosure rules and just asking the right questions, go beyond what companies say, to what is really happening.
The Casablanca exchange still has a way to go before achieving the clout of mature exchanges like those in the UK or the US, but one thing led to another and we discussed its role in promoting the transparency, liquidity and confidence foreign investors want, and that financial journalists can help enforce.
As we went on, another financial journalist brought up her stock exchange reporting screen on the projector and showed the workshop how to go about getting the right information about indexes, companies and their investors, navigating the resources available to them for free.
By the end of the workshop, which ran from February 25-28 2013, we wrapped up knowing we’d not only passed on tips on covering economics and finance, but we’d also helped create better understanding across the client’s newsroom of exactly what these pointy-headed financial journalists are up to.
The rest, as someone doubtless said after the 1929 crash, is history!
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
