Eye-Catching Words and Earnings Season

My staff is starting to keep a list of words they think work really well in drawing people to headlines.

It includes two from today ...

"Violent" and "Bottom."

These follow from "capitulation" and "mortgage" from the previous week. "Manhunt" and "fraud" seemed to draw a lot too, because of the Sam Israel stuff.

Names also seem to draw traffic. People you love ... "El-Erian," "Buffett," "Ross,"  ... and people you hate ... "Chavez." I'll let you decide in which category to put "Trump."

Allen Wastler
Managing Editor, CNBC.com

It's an amusing newsroom game following from my occasional rants about headlines and dull words.

No if we could only get people to respond to "earnings" and "revenue" for the next two weeks. You be seeing a lot of that in headlines, because of earnings season. Unfortunately earnings stories, while essential, aren't really widely read.

That's especially the case here. The kind of earnings season the market needs -- steady, on target, and dull -- doesn't lend itself well to attention-grabbing headlines. So here's hoping for boredom.

Earnings season gets a tip-off today with Alcoa. You can check what to expect here.