How do you handle INFORMATION?
- Thread starter Satyrican
- Start date
Books - pick one and read it in my spare time. Finish it and move on to another.
Online resources - I can count the number of online resources I use on one hand - most can be detrimental to your P&L.
Academic journals - none.
Newsletters - see online resources. 99% of newsletters can be detrimental to your P&L.
Articles - don't know what articles you refer to here...I read Yahoo! News multiple times per day (go to "Most Popular" for the best headlines).
In short, most of the above is noise. Weed it out, focus on becoming self-sufficient, and you will have plenty of time to do what you need to do!
Good luck.
a crucial distinction when doing market research is that you are not reading for comprehension, you are reading for specific information. the ability to glean the information you need from the myriad of data is one of the keys to this game. this skill will come with practice and by knowing what you are looking for.
best to you,
surfer
best to you,
surfer
I regard information as food for my trading passion... and my appetite is never-ending...
Well, you have to find those that can consistently give you something useful without harping on the same old crap or way of looking at things.
Some I like are John Mauldin at www.frontlinethoughts.com for sifting other articles; Ike Iossif at Aegean Capital, Michael Santoli who writes The Trader column in Barron's. I subscribe to Real Money because I have always liked Rev Shark and there is always an article or two to print off and read on the weekend.
On investing which is a huge struggle for me, smartmoney.com is very well done as is Erin Arvedlund on mutual funds (in Barrons).
I don't watch TV during the trading day but Cashin is the best thing on CNBC which otherwise seems kind of goofy. Finally, on TV, two things that are right under folks noses are Nightly Business Report which always has some tidbit or technical item in the old school style of reporting and Kudlow & Cramer (scoffed at by traders) which is the driver (and is driven by) what is impotant on Capitol Hill and in the Bush administration at this time.
I'd like to know what others find useful.
Geo.
Some I like are John Mauldin at www.frontlinethoughts.com for sifting other articles; Ike Iossif at Aegean Capital, Michael Santoli who writes The Trader column in Barron's. I subscribe to Real Money because I have always liked Rev Shark and there is always an article or two to print off and read on the weekend.
On investing which is a huge struggle for me, smartmoney.com is very well done as is Erin Arvedlund on mutual funds (in Barrons).
I don't watch TV during the trading day but Cashin is the best thing on CNBC which otherwise seems kind of goofy. Finally, on TV, two things that are right under folks noses are Nightly Business Report which always has some tidbit or technical item in the old school style of reporting and Kudlow & Cramer (scoffed at by traders) which is the driver (and is driven by) what is impotant on Capitol Hill and in the Bush administration at this time.
I'd like to know what others find useful.
Geo.
At the beginning I bought newspaper everyday, now I never read them just for fun ... after the article is already old generally 
. I also met journalists from those papers we have just been laughing together that they just write what the people want to hear and of course they also use it for other reasons I won't tell you explicitly hee hee !
. I also met journalists from those papers we have just been laughing together that they just write what the people want to hear and of course they also use it for other reasons I won't tell you explicitly hee hee !In my first year in trading I was information junky and it was a huge distraction. Now I have moved to a more technical based system and have shut off CNBC, IBD, Barons and all other magazines . personally I think it leads me to second guess my system generated signals. Price, volume and patterns is the only thing I look at. It has improved profitability dramatically!!!
Learn to quickly estimate the value of the source. For instance, take ET. We've recently had quite a bit of posting that contained absolutely no (or in some cases, very tiny amounts of) information pertaining to this business of trading. It's very apparent that these posters have a flamingly (pun intended) high noise to signal ratio. These "sources" have low values, and are not worth one's time. Therefore, it behooves the informationally saturated trader to put them on ignore.
Another fine example is some bozo who writes an editorial in the business section of my local paper. Or used to, anyways - dunno if he still writes it. I read the first two or three of his columns, and they were always liberal rants about how we need to enslave the wealthy so that other people won't have to get a job. That stuff is nonsense, and I do not have time to read it.
One will also find intelligent people who disagree; these sources are very useful. It's far more important to be right than to never change one's mind. I use one fast method of determining whether an argument is likely to have merit - I observe the style of the argument. If the source is confident, polite, thoughtful and speaks carefully and exactly (without exaggeration), and covers logical arguments against his position, that person's value as a source is raised in my eyes. If a person resorts to straw men and personal attacks with plenty of vulgarity or a host of other flawed forms of argument, then their information is likely to be of little or no value.
Clearly this is a shortcut, and one will miss useful, perhaps even important information. For instance here at ET, Johnny Rotten is a fine example of a source I would disregard. However, other posters that I do consider valid sources suggest that he has at least one thread that has significant value. So there is a certain risk to this discrimination. However, it has served me well in the past, and I shall continue it's employ.