Hey guys,

Marc Andreessen, a pretty famous billionaire venture capitalist, recommends reading the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times cover to cover every single day for people who are relatively new/beginners to the world of finance/money/investing/stock markets/financial literacy etc. (me)

Do you guys agree? Would this be a good use of time?

You should say what Icahn said about Andreessen and I believe it was the skype deal. Andreessen, Dell, and Fiorina are prime examples of three that should head from the board room to the mail room.

As for Wall Street Journal I love reading it cover to cover when I have the chance.

no.

I wouldn't recommend reading it cover to cover as it can be a bit overwhelming.

When I first started getting into finance, I would read just 3 WSJ articles a day. It really helps to build a foundation in the industry and learn how things work. Those 3 articles grow into 5 and then more as you continue to learn about it, assuming you are fascinated with the topics.

If you have time then it's probably not a bad way to get a basic financial education. Definitely a better use of time than any b school class but basic accounting classes. If you haven't taken basic accounting classes I'd strongly recommend getting an accounting 101 textbook and really internalizing it.

Seems boring but I learned financial accounting from reading many and various various 10-Qs and 10-Ks to go along with reading finance news. I would read something in the news, do research on the company, read their 10-Qs, that kind of thing. So read the news then research the company when your interest is sparked. Also I would recommend reading Damodaran's books on valuation and risk. Of course as Bored Social states, a year od financial accounting at your local CC is worthwhile.

Why? What do you hope to gain? You're not going to gain any sort of understanding of world financial events without some university level education in business/finance first. What might happen is you start reading about some company or world event and thinking you understand it you then invest in it. But the smart money is always going to be some investment bank or hedge fund employing a dozen Ivy league grads whose only job is analyzing that thing you bet on. And they are not getting their news/analysis from the WSJ/FT.

WSJ and the Times are full of talking heads. You'd sure appear to know a lot without any of it of practical use to you.

it depends entirely on the combination of what you would be doing instead and what you enjoy doing. if you would be watching sex in the city instead and if you enjoy reading it, sure. if you are forgoing other productive activities and don't like doing this, probably not.

For a complete beginner I would recommend reading everything on the Bogleheads wiki.

my very simple answer is yes, and i think the WSJ is much better than FT. of course depends on the geography but i think there's way more general relevant stuff in the wall street journal.. one thing FT has that is good is some strategy articles in the weekend edition. i think WSJ needs more strategy articles. maybe an in-house guy..... but for depth and breadth of financial news, i think WSJ is miles ahead of others.

and yes, reading the WSJ every day is very helpful....

one thing i have found though is that there's "analysis paralysis" the more nitty stuff i look at (durable goods orders were soft!!!), the more i come up with complex ideas (prove i'm smarter than others) or reasons to sell....

i basically think too much information can make you miss the forest for the trees (or whatever the expression is)........ i think some successful managers shut themselves out from the market noise day-to-day.

I don't get how people recommend this stuff....

The whole finance industry is revolving around skimming the spreed between deals and accounting tricks that like to pretend to do or predict something. FT and WSJ are noise.

if you wanna do finance then financial section of dailyssrn.com/, arxiv.org/archive/q-fin, AQR capital research, researchaffiliates.com publications, blog.thinknewfound.com etc.

2 years reading WSJ or 2 years reading above links WSJ / FT will look like amateur hour.

I once had a subscription and tried to read it as much as I could. I don't have a subscription anymore only because I haven't had the time to keep reading it. I now use google to read any articles that have headlines that I think are relevant to me.

Short answer is "probably not." The longer answer is "it could be." You have to know how to filter out all of the noise. They have to write something to fill the page. I do find that the WSJ geared towards business is much more relevant than nearly all other newspapers/websites that are a combination of global news and business.

On the other hand, I listened to a podcast a couple weeks ago where they were talking about whether it was worth reading that much and if it has any type of impact on becoming a better investor (I'm widely paraphrasing). The guest of the podcast made an interesting point. He said that if you just focus on the more microeconomic reports such as annual reports, quarterly reports, transcripts, etc. you learn about the macroeconomic issues.

Do you need to read countless articles about how bad oil has been? What kind of actionable information are you gaining? Instead, read the reports of companies who are stating that their business is affected by oil, that the economy has been slowing down, manufacturing is slowing down, etc. etc. As you read report after report of businesses all feeling a similar strain on their financials you start to learn about the macroeconomics at the same time. If there is something out there that is important to your general knowledge, some form of news that is relevant, then someone you talk to will probably bring it up in a conversation and what they tell you is probably enough information to understand it. You don't need to read a few thousand words to tell you that there is still threats of terrorism around the world.

Personally, I prefer to invest in smaller cap companies, mainly in the microcap area. You aren't going to hear about those tiny companeis in the WSJ so better use of your time is going out and actually hunting for them.

Two good articles to read are:

Guide to Reading for Investors

and What to Read in Investing

I have another PDF of a good topic of avoiding news, but I am going to be late for work so I have to run.

this is a very good point.... and i think newspapers and most analysis sites mostly describe what HAS happened, not what IS happening.....

also, i think they tend to extrapolate the past.... when oil has a good week, they have articles about bullish factors for oil. when oil has a bad week they talk about all the negative factors regarding oil.............. whereas i think you want/need someone who gives the negative when oil is positive and vice-versa. i think that is the basic notion of tedlock's (name??) recent forecasting book, which i think complements nate silver's book very nicely.

while i agree on reading the wsj daily...

i do agree with the one poster that cxoadvisory.com, mabane faber, ssrn.com, pimco.com, (first quadrant and arnott's new firm) are where the action is and what you should learn from the future....

there is tons and tons of noise in the marketplace..........

has anyone done a really good book at separating out the noise? i will note that in jobs where you manage money or service those who do that you are often expected to know about all the noise (like going in front of a client committee). unless you are pure quant shop or something like that.

i had never really thought of that last point i made....

if you trade your own money, you don't have to know tons of stuff going on in the world... i think you can rely on trading indicators (moving averages, RSI(2). stuff like that.

but if you work where you communicate with others alot and/or manage OPM then unfortunately my experience is that you have try to know pretty all that is reasonably knowable that is going on in the world....

within reason, and obvious every job will be somewhere on the continuim between "managing your own money" and being "lead macro hedge manager" or CIO of a large pension fund.....

Some good links here. Ty

Couple of decades back, I coached a stock analyst friend of mine on what to say when someone brought up a point that was contrary to what he was recommending. The key phrase is "Yes, but the market's already priced that in." He made a good career for himself on the back of that.

if you skip over the tinfoil hat conspiracy stories, reading Zero Hedge will probably give you the best all around lay of the land finance wise.

im finding ZH unreadable these days. any intriguing finance story (usually just sourced from a wall street research report) is paywalled, and most free stories are deranged maga takes. god help you if you venture into the comments section

yah I often find the article I want to read is the premium paywalled one. I mostly use it for facts & figures articles rather than the innumerable “4th turning” and dystopian type stuff. they also post stuff from newsletters like Peter St Onge who I like a lot.

but anything written on that website you need to develop your own radar to sift through the bs because it’s obviously very slanted, but if you know that going in I think it still provides value.

i haven’t read the WSJ in years - maybe I need to revisit?

anything you like similar to zero hedge but less gold and silver preppers intended audience?

btw, regarding the comments, I find it hilarious that they have been shitting on Bitcoin for years and are incapable of adjusting their mental framework to reality. they could have all made a lot of money over the years but their pride is more important.

If you go to archive.ph you can usually read the paywall stuff

Almost any reading is a better use of your time, imo, than what most people spend most of their free time doing, but I would probably need about 120 hours a day before the WSJ and FT would make the cut as far as thing I will spend my time reading.