Signal versus Noise

I thought it would be of benefit to my fellow investors to know just what’s important to me at the moment and what isn’t. What am I using as my guides – more importantly what am I avoiding as just sensationalist.

News of little use to us investors.

Firstly it’s important to stress that periods of strong performance are followed by brief periods of losses. Periods of losses always turn into a following period of strong performance. Day turns to night, night turns to day.

The media suggest day turns to night, night turns to more night. So yes I ignore most of the easily available UK media. Specialist financial or the BBC. Useful if you separate the newsflash from the biased speculation but that job becomes tedious. After a while they make you feel not only unbalanced, but an outright conspiracy theorist for daring to disagree with them.

Let’s get this straight. The media that we watch and read just isn’t interested in us as investors. In fact much of the mainstream UK media is curated by individuals who came through our tertiary education system at broadly the same time and so were subject to the sort of anti-capitalist ideologies still prevalent today. Socialism is perfect, but it still needs paying for. Either you believe in capitalism or you don’t, but as investors it’s our job to provide the capital needed by growing businesses and there should be no guilt in being rewarded for the faith needed to invest in those businesses.

News that we must pay attention to.

I love the phrase “Skin in the game”. For those uncertain of what it means, here is a explanation

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