I stopped reading news several years ago
and you probably should too I used to be
really into news and I would read Google
News every day Yahoo News I would read
The Economist once a week and the reason
I did all this is because my livelihood
depended on it I was a day trader and I
needed to be able to understand all the
news that I possibly could and I would
just absorb as much news as I could and
I would try to use this news information
to make informed trades every day like I
thought that basically I would be able
to get some sort of information and
based on that I could make some
intelligent trade however if you read
most investing books they actually tell
you that short-term trading is not
really a good strategy you can't really
beat the market easily that way you're
competing with you know all the newsing
information is already Preston and I was
finding that sometimes I'd make money
sometimes I would lose money and it was
really hard to make the trades and most
of the time the information was already
pressed and you got high-frequency
trading algorithms which are trading
within milliseconds of news of breaking
and it's not even anyway basically
you're not even trading against real
humans anymore
select 90% to trades on Wall Street are
done by high-frequency trading
so you're just trading against computer
machine learning algorithms that are
like just trying to interpret the news
sentiment so you should ask yourself
what value does the news have and what
are you expecting to gain from that and
when I thought about all the news that I
have been reading it was pretty much
valueless like I was unable to gain any
monetary value from that news and it was
basically becoming like entertainment to
me like I might as well have been
reading reddit which is a lot of fun or
- by the way and the other thing I
realized was after I had spent a good
year or two trying to stay on top of the
news I found that I had developed no
skills and that reading news is not a
good investment of time or knowledge
because that news that information
becomes out.they
so fast it depreciates incredibly
quickly it's not like spending time to
learn a skill and that skill becomes
useful throughout the rest of your life
spending your time reading hours and
hours of news that information is really
valuable only for perhaps that one day
and then by the second day is old
outdated information and there may be
some long-term value but it is so
difficult to bring out that long-term
value there's too much noise to signal
ratio and the old days it was considered
very respectable to read the news and I
would agree with that
like there was very there are only a few
newspapers that would be reporting
information about the world and there
was a competitive edge for anyone to be
able to understand what was happening in
the world these days with the internet
it is basically information overload and
everyone is always reading blogs reddit
Facebook social media Twitter just tons
of information is coming in and reading
is basically not a valued skill anymore
I would say what is valued is being able
to filter that information these days if
you just wanted to spend your time
reading the news it would take you
probably a whole day just to finish
reading off and use it even then you
wouldn't have covered a lot of it how do
you filter that information right like
I've seen some people said you're just
gonna give a Facebook or Twitter or give
up all social media and I don't feel
that that's really quite the right
solution because all that information
could be useful and what you really need
to be doing this understand you have to
filter that information and being able
to handle massive amounts of information
and I can tell you one thing is that
when I used to work at Google the best
engineers and project managers I knew
there would be handling probably 5 to 10
times the amount of information that a
normal person has handling they are
really on top of things and they need to
be for their job like they need to just
handle tons of email tons of documents
tons of presentations and just absorb
all that information and I would say
that a lot of those people basically
have really good filter setup like
they get tons of email every day and
they would just have really good filters
to help them organize what could be
noise and what could be a signal maybe
just quickly scan emails that may not be
useful news and things maybe they'll
check out once a day or something like
that like they just need to have really
good system setup so that they're not
wasting all of their time reading news
and some people would say that it's
important to read news so that they seem
like they are intelligent and they can
have intellectual conversation with
another person at like a dinner party
but you know that's really pretty
circular logic and that was that's again
based on very old ideas like the world
is different now being well informed of
what's happening in the world I'm not
sure if that's really a valuable skill
to have anymore
like it makes you entertaining at dinner
parties maybe but even many people these
days can't spend other time trying to
figure out like who's the vice president
or how many wars were fighting right now
and along with that I would say that
even reading itself is no longer an
issue I would imagine that I mean the
world should probably be like 99%
literate like everyone is reading blogs
social media comments they're texting to
each other
I don't think reading is really a
problem for teens anymore because people
are reading all the time now just to be
able to communicate with their friends
everyone's gonna know so the idea of
reading and the idea of reading news
these are skills that probably used to
be valuable but they're just not that
valuable anymore so what's valuable it
is just being able to stay on top of
tons of information and the more
information that you can manage and
gather I think that's the key that's
that will help you have a good
understanding of the landscape and you
really need to be able to target which
information you spend your time trying
to gather I would say for example if you
work in text spend your time reading
tech news I mean if you work in like
investment banking in the energy sector
then spend your time reading news about
oil and energy if you're like a micro
bonds trader then spend your time
reading news about Finance since this is
a tech channel I thought I would just
tell you which news sources that IP
attention - so if you're just getting
started out in tap I recommend reading
to news sources hacker news and tech
meme and these two will pretty much
cover you on tech and you know we want
to understand what we're really looking
for here and that's really about it's
not just random tech news or like the
newest iPhone came out or something like
that
what I'm looking for personally is
actionable new it's like if a new API or
platform is released or a new framework
that can be used then that might be
interesting for me to use to start a new
site business so I'm basically looking
for a time like the gold rush
opportunity
we're like Southern Company opens up a
new platform and developers are invited
to build for it order some new
technology or something that's
interesting and you know that might be
usable and some of my work either
currently or in the future or just good
information to know so that's really
what I'm looking for and hacker news
basically I think is great for staying
up-to-date with like startup type news
and then tech name is generally like
bigger company tech news like industry
why tech news so I think those would
cover you and then I also checked this
other funding site Zero Hedge comm which
is like I don't know why I check it you
know it's just it's a day trader web
site basically and they they report on
very contrarian news I almost there's
almost no value in this I just it's just
oh the habit I keep around then it's
just doom and gloom news really and it
gives me kind of a healthy contrarian
balance to a lot of the mainstream news
so like basically your perspective on
the world is shaped by the news sources
that you choose like for example if you
watch a lot of fox news then you
probably become a very conservative type
of person because that's the bias of
that channel and then like CNN for
example maybe a little bit more liberal
I basically don't read much Zero Hedge
because it's just the articles are so
opaque and it's difficult to read and
even though
talking about so I wouldn't really
recommend that one and then I would
check some of my social media and I
would say the key to this is you don't
want to check it all the time every day
like I would say if you checked it once
or twice a day that might be sufficient
but doing it a lot I think I just end up
burning a lot of your time