Drowning in information? Good advice from The Motley Fool
Because I write a fair amount about investment, about which I am startlingly ignorant, I follow a few writers in the hope of catching up.
One is Morgan Housel of The Motley Fool. He gives you a lot of useful stuff before trying to sell you something.
Today he wrote a very good piece which pointed out that we simply cannot read all the stuff that is pumped out, and suggesting a few things to follow if you are interested in investment.
He suggested we should read stuff we disagree with; and observed that a lot of news is either irrelevant or plain batty. His advice and observations are very good, whatever you’re interested in.
He gives good examples. For example, from a December 2008 Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces — with Alaska reverting to Russian control …
California will form the nucleus of what he calls “The Californian Republic,” and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of “The Texas Republic,” a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an “Atlantic America” that may join the European Union.
He then quotes a headline, from August 2011: “Dow falls 512 in steepest decline since ’08 crisis.”
As he notes, “it felt like a big deal at the time. But 14 months later, how many people still care about it? No one.”
Anyhow, the whole piece is at http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/11/19/how-to-read-financial-news.aspx.
One person commented that Housel didn’t even mention any broadcast news as worth following. It’s true isn’t it? Once upon a time I suspect the BBC would have been a reputable source. Is it now?
The quotation at the top, by the way, comes from Disraeli. I think.
I lost confidence in the BBC when they retrained their reporters to use body language that looks like the weird pensioner thunderbirds in the Wonga adverts. Or as Malcolm Tucker would put it “like an octopus trying to remove a bra”.
There are a few good journalists left but there are sadly too many “presenters” who seem to think that’s what they do.