Is news necessary to trading?

YES,

It is foolish to think news are not relevant.

Examples:
Because I do not have news alerts, I did not know that the upward spike in the futures on Thurs was a real one instead one of those random illiquidity lunchtime spikes. Had I known why it was going on I would have covered my stock short position earlier and probably reversed it. Instead I waited for a volume confirmation in the stock causing me quite a loss.

Because I check Briefing in the morning, I knew there was news on FSH & AOT on Wed. Since I know FSH, I was able to have one of my best days ever in this dead ass horrible market environment. Since I knew the two stocks were related, they had almost an indentical chart and I was taking positions in both of them at the same time in the same direction.

If you are a monkey 10 cent scalper you can do without news but do not even try to disregard its relevance. For NYSE lower volume stocks, news adds volume and liquidity allowing you to size up significantly and giving the specialist bigger fish to screw over. If you know how the stock trades, you can use news days to your advantage. You can start predicting what the specialist will do as well.

Look at the overnights one could have taken on the financial stocks the day before Lehman reported. If you ignore news, you would never even consider taking the chance. If you follow key earnings, you would have considered the possible trade.

Traders make money from investors and investors' vechiles like mutual & pension funds. How do you think those trade? On bids & offers, MACDs, stochiastics? No they trade on "facts", news and analysis. So if you want to maximize your trades knowing how the big fish behaves is a huge must. Know thy enemy.
 
I find news distracting. But the news like the release of reports at the 10:00 area seems to move the indexes.

I find that bringing up Walmart and watching its price, sometimes and I say sometimes it will lead the indexs on daily chart reading after market close.

Michael B.
 
Check out fly on the wall for news;only $25 a month and they make great upgrade/downgrade calls,especially ones that come out after 9:30.Here is an example...GDYS upgraded on Wed. 3/17 at 10:36 by Suntrust.Stock was about $10.50 when the call was made.By the end of the day it was at $11.25 and by Friday it was high as $12.19.It made a 16% move in 3 days.
 
Quote from richtrader:

I have been doing much better, all things considered (like market strength, etc).

I used to ignore great setups because they'd be in a "weird" company like a Brazilian Hospital and be more apt to take less-than-great setups in companies I'd heard of.

Or, I'd see a great setup and see something negative in briefing.com and ignore the setup and lose out.

To me, nothing beats a great setup. I hate to sound like Darvis or Livermore, but the prices (and charts) don't lie.
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right......so you just totally ignore fundamentals. must be a scalper.....don bright loves you!!! churn and burn baby!!! good luck.
 
Quote from wackojacko:

right......so you just totally ignore fundamentals. must be a scalper.....don bright loves you!!! churn and burn baby!!! good luck.
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:confused: Whatever. Wackojacko?......Hmmmmm....OKaaaaaay.
 
Quote from OddTrader:

Say if one as a minority has got a piece of news with (if possible) 100% accuracy without missing any possible details, but how can (s)he ensure her/his personal interpretation and prediction about the market dynamics IS 100% accurate when compared to the mojority of crowd who might be even wrong in absolute terms.
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An excellent point. I believe Jim Rogers answered this by saying that you have to have staying power (i.e. don't take too big a position relative to your account size). If your interpretation of the news is correct, you will ultimately profit, but you may have to hold on through some big moves against you.

In the short run the market is a voting mechanism; in the long run it is a weighing mechanism.
 
I'm a news junkie, yet terrible at making quick trading decisions based on news. For example, when the news came out in December about mad cow disease being confirmed in the US, I assumed that live cattle prices would be driven higher, because there would be widespread herd slaughter and a resulting shortage.

Fortunately I didn't trade based on this analysis. :)

After keeping the TV on next to my computer throughout March 2003 and the onset of the Iraq war, and not making a dime trading off the news, I resolved to forget the news and refocus all my efforts on backtesting systems, where my personal strengths (I'm an engineer) have a potentially greater payoff.

One observation I'd like to share as a systems trader: if you haven't included news events in your backtesting, don't override your systems based on news!
 
"You knock Peter which is a joke. Peter is likely one of the most profitable traders on this board in IMHO. Some of the absolute best traders around look at the big "amature" news sources and then read the mood of the markets to make either consitent or contrarian decisions. "

Im sure he is, like the rest of the 99% of the members on this site.

Interesting how you say the Best traders look at "amature" news sources in order to read the mood of the markets to make either consistent or contrarian decisions......I guess guys like you also trade off CNBC.....

I will have to pass ur advice along....do you mind if i qoute?
 
Quote from Diode:

An excellent point. I believe Jim Rogers answered this by saying that you have to have staying power (i.e. don't take too big a position relative to your account size). If your interpretation of the news is correct, you will ultimately profit, but you may have to hold on through some big moves against you.

In the short run the market is a voting mechanism; in the long run it is a weighing mechanism.
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imo, we would never know the absolutely correct interpretations for every piece of news individually everytime (who can?).

But we could try to design an effective system to control the risks, and still make profits, in case of encountering any unexpected news . :confused:
 
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