Read This Newsletter, Not That One

Jeff’s Random Words

I love investing. That’s why I’m writing to you on a beautiful Saturday morning, dear readers. It’s also why I spend most of my free time reading SEC filings and earnings transcripts. As I write this, it's occurring to me that I am not very cool.

I digress. My point is, I enjoy doing all this reading and the great thing about the world we live in now is that there’s no shortage of information. Between what I mentioned above and all the free and paid newsletters and social media posts, there’s no shortage of sources of information.

This is not news to any of you, but it got me thinking about why I read what I read. With seemingly endless resources but only 24 hours a day, we all need to decide where to spend our time. As I thought about it, I realized I tend to be drawn to the things that teach me something. If I’m going to spend my time reading, I want to come away smarter. There’s a joke to be made here about getting over a low bar, but now that only one of us is writing each week, I won’t have to read Jason’s response! (Jeff’s right. Low bar. -jh)

Ok, back to the topic at hand. I wasn’t always this way with my investment research. When I was new, I was more compelled to read the things that would tell me what stocks would go up. In 2020 when I started investing in stocks, this kind of “information” was everywhere. I frequently joke that 2020 and 2021 was the age of rocket ship emojis on Twitter.

But what I realized over time is that nobody knows what’s going to go up, but many people will present themselves as someone who does know. And let’s be honest, that’s compelling to a lot of people. It was (and sometimes still is) compelling to me, and if you’re being honest, it’s likely compelling on some level to you as well.

So here’s my point. As you decide where to spend your investing research time, consider being judicious and only consuming the content that helps you think. That teaches you something. That increases the likelihood of you making smarter investing decisions tomorrow than you did today. 

Then, when a decision you made goes well, you can give yourself a nice pat on the back for being an informed independent thinker. And when a decision you made goes poorly, you’ve given yourself yet another learning experience for next time. The alternative is giving someone else the credit or the blame, and that won’t help you get any better as an investor.

Jeff