| Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) founder and multibillionaire Bill Gates calls this "the greatest story that no one knows." Although they would know it if they read Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, Peter Diamandis, Gregg Easterbrook, Ron Bailey or - our 25th Annual Investment U keynote speaker - Marian Tupy. Polls show that the average American - which includes the average investor and even the average professional money manager - believes that the country is on the wrong track, our children face a diminished future and the American Dream is over. They haven't just told this to pollsters since Joe Biden came into office... or since Donald Trump got into politics... or even since we had a global financial crisis 15 years ago. They have been saying it for decades. "Well," you might say, "maybe they're right. There's a lot that's wrong with the world, plenty that's getting worse, and who keeps the ultimate ledger that determines whether the world is getting better or worse?" Plenty of people do. It's called big data. And what it reveals is that most people in the West today are living longer, healthier, safer, richer, freer lives than any generation in history. If you want to hold the right view - one that translates into the greatest rewards in today's financial markets - you need to understand the major trend lines. Yet most people don't. Why? Because they get their information about the world at large from a biased media. I'm not talking about political bias, like the left-leaning prejudice of The New York Times and CNN or the right-leaning prejudice of The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. I'm talking about the negativity bias that runs through the entire media from the extreme left to the extreme right. Understand that there is ferocious competition among newspapers, magazines, cable news, talk radio, internet blogs and social media. They all have the same goal: to capture your attention. The bigger the audience, the more advertisers will pay. So what marketers tell them is to deliver the sensational, the horrible, the grotesque, the terrifying. Fear sells. So give them burning buildings, airplane crashes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, forest fires, terrorist attacks, mass shootings, market crashes, shark attacks and war. In short, give them a highly nonrandom sample of the worst things that happened to human beings - or the planet - every day. As the old saying goes, "If it bleeds, it leads." This is what attracts an audience. And a big audience attracts advertisers (and subscribers). That means more sales, more profits, more moola. There is only one loser in this scenario: the unadulterated truth. I'm talking about data that provides insights that can create substantial profits in the market. The only problem is you won't enjoy those profits if you don't see the most important trends. In next Friday's column, I'll reveal what those are and where you can find them... and how you can profit from them. Good investing, Alex   | 
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