Ask HN: How do you consume noisy financial news? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you consume noisy financial news?

3 pointscaro_douglos7 comments

TLDR: Short of putting together an aggregator...how do you attempt to grapple too much noise from financial news sources? Is turning them off the best bet?

From a national (USA) perspective I see people obsess over the markets (as they should given it's their life savings at play). My observations is that the older crowds watch cnbc, fox business news, or NBR (rip [1]). In bad times watching this news brings a sense of panic to the boomer. In good times it still just raises their blood pressure.

~15 years ago I would read the financial times and watch Nightly Business Report on pbs after school. These days I stick to headlines and conspiracy theories... doubling down on surfacing sources through duckduckgo and twitter. I use the !bang feature so as not to limit my results to bing. Certainly not ideal. This results in much of the financial news I stumble upon seeming like a WWE act[2].

Are there any Paul Kangas like sources that I'm missing other than r/wallstreetbets?

[1] NBR is no more: http://nbr.com/2019/12/27/message-from-bill-griffeth-and-sue-herera/ https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/pbs-nightly-business-report-cease-production-1203401018/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_wrestling#Dramatic_elements

> Is turning them off the best bet?

Yes.

> From a national (USA) perspective I see people obsess over the markets (as they should given it's their life savings at play).

Warren Buffett, John Bogle, and various other investing "gurus" would disagree with you here[1][2].

There's a great deal of evidence that day-trading, (individual) stock-picking, and generally trying to make predictions based on subjective market data is ineffective.

Many of the investors who succeed in this arena are using HFT, better predictive algorithms than we have access to, and a short-term mindset[3][4][5].

If you want to protect your retirement assets, check out Bogle's books, Boglehead communities, and other passive-investing strategies. These don't forbid anyone from active investing, but they say to minimize your active bets, never listen to brokers/money managers, and stick with industries you know well.

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/08/warren-buffett-says-he-never...

2. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/13/what-warren-buffett-and-kevi...

3. https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-the-random-wal...

4. https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0113/has-high-fr...

5. https://seekingalpha.com/article/2125833-how-to-beat-high-fr...

JL Collins [1] has a great talk at Google I discovered while perusing youtube[2]. He taps into Warren's advice of not watching the markets too closely (mentioned in your second link).

[1] https://jlcollinsnh.com/manifesto/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T71ibcZAX3I

Keep in mind that most news is picked by editors for its entertainment value not to inform. People seem to be attracted by negative news so that's what's mostly on all news programs. Yes it's important to know bad news but when we are flooded with it it's impossible to know what's important. It's best to stop consuming the constant news cycle. It's best to teach your self thru books and be selective on what you watch.

Don't.. it's mostly noise to be honest. There are good financial commentators (e.g., Matt Levine) but most financial news is just noise

Learning to read financial reports, or at least summaries is a great tool. You can't get more unbiased than reading a 10-K from sec.gov.

Like any other “news” (aka native advertising) just ignore and continue as usual.

Look into Technical Analysis. Anyone that tells you it doesn't work doesn't know what they are doing.

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