Reference: Note from the editor, September 1, 2008

Citing rising newsprint costs, the Bangkok Post has announced that it will raise the price of the paper from 25 Baht to 30 Baht (Note from the editor, September 1, 2008). I trust that the Post had explored ways to control newsprint costs before resorting to this action. One obvious way to do that is to shrink the dimensions of the newspaper. I have noticed that American newspapers have been shrinking for decades. The New York Times is significantly smaller than it was in 1960 but still very readable and also it is easier to to read the paper on the train. Yet another way is to eliminate sections that are not widely read. One section that immediately comes to mind is the expanded business section on Mondays that includes two to four pages devoted to the technical analysis of financial markets. There are a lot of things that we are not sure of when it comes to financial markets but the random walk nature of prices is not one of them. It implies that there are no patterns in historical price data that foretell future price behavior. Your weekly section on technical analysis assumes that there are, and at once wastes newsprint and weakens the credibility of the paper.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand