Is Maria Bartiromo a chicken or an egg?

This is a little taboo, writing about another financial network/operation. CNBC is the Montague to the Capulet of CNNfn, the sister network of this Web site. Heck, I'm a regular on CNN Money Morning, CNNfn's pre-market program. Still this is a subject worth exploring.

Back to the fowl riddle and the CNBC correspondent. There have been a couple of juicy stories lately suggesting that Bartiromo moves stocks. More salacious, those stories hint that "Wall Street insiders" profit from fore-knowledge of her reports. Adding an academic credibility to the eyebrow-raising suggestions is a study from two Emory business professors suggesting that an on-air mention from Bartiromo is worth a 62-basis point pop in a stock's price.

"Seventy three percent of the firms discussed positively during (CNBC's Midday Call segment) have a positive one-minute return, with an average increase of $109 million in market capitalization," the professors, Jeffrey Busse and Clifton Greene, note.

Yeah, that would be the stupid money effect. And the nature of news.

Stupid money? That's the people who think buying a stock simply because of a CNBC report, or any other report, is a wise move. Sure, the network gets its fair share of scoops. But there is more than equal shot that if you are hearing it on CNBC it's already been said or read somewhere else -- news wires, speeches, public meetings, not to mention the squawk boxes at brokerage houses or in phone calls between analysts and their institutional clients.

Nevertheless, the mystique of live television is the sense of immediacy. So if Bartiromo is there telling you that Mr. Analyst of MegaBroker Inc. has "just" issued a sell order on Putzstock, you may not realize that this news hit the wires five minutes ago and plenty of other outfits are breaking the same news.

Interestingly the Emory study found that where it could be measured over the long term (the price changes after CNBC segments were sometimes teeny-tiny over the course of the day), the price fluctuation of a stock was part of a "larger, long-horizon reaction." Gee, news happened and the stock reacted.

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CNBC, piped into over 80 million homes, reaches most of the people who'd be interested. Hence the increased odds that a sizeable amount of money would react to a stock mention on the network. (If CNNfn had that kind of distribution, the professors might have looked at us too.)

And its size gives CNBC a fair amount of muscle in getting scoops and pole position on guest interviews and such. Analysts and sources looking for publicity will obviously favor the outfit that can give them the most exposure. Such is the nature of "exclusives." A high-profile name, like Bartiromo, can help seal such deals.

But here is the trick to news: A lot of times it isn't a surprise. If you're an astute trader, you read the landscape and know where the news is likely to break. Or, you have an inside line.

To their credit, the professors of the aforementioned study recognized this in noting that some stocks have a price surge just before CNBC airs a favorable report.

"The run up in prices ... is consistent with some market participants' awareness of the information before the segment airs. Analysts who share their views with (CNBC) are also likely to share their views with clients, who can trade on the information before it is broadcast," the professors said in their study, due to be published this summer in the Journal of Financial Economics.

Hey, analysts know where the chicken in their pot comes from. And news gets out. And stupid money will chase it, right to the slaughterhouse.  

Allen Wastler is managing editor of CNN/Money and can be emailed here.