You Say Daily, and I Say Goodbye
February 15, 2011 8:53 AM   Subscribe

I am subscribed to too many financial daily newspapers and need to switch to 3-4 weekly magazines. Which should I read to get a complete (but not excessively detailed) picture?

Currently I subscribe to Investor's Business Daily, The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. It's too much content, and really, I don't know if I care about Credit Suisse selling contingent convertible bonds. I try, but I don't know if I do.

So I'm thinking of switching to some combo of weeklies -- The Economist, Barron's, Forbes? Fortune? I don't really know what the top market/investment weeklies are. Any help is appreciated.

And if anyone thinks I can't follow the market properly without at least one daily, please offer your opinion on which of the three I should stick with.

FWIW, I am an investor who does not work in finance, so I'm mostly worried about the market, but I need to see wider trends and anxieties as well (such as the Eurozone debt crisis news)
posted by AlbatrossJones to Media & Arts (8 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I like

a) The Economist

b) Barrons

I spend quite a bit of time reading them.

I am currently giving Bloombery Businessweek a try. It's not as insightful as The Economist or Barrons, I typically finish reading it in bed on a Saturday morning.
posted by jchaw at 9:15 AM on February 15, 2011


Best answer: Neither Forbes nor Fortune are actually weeklies. They're biweekly and triweekly, respectively, according to Wikipedia.

You'll want to look at Bloomberg BusinessWeek (as it's now called after it was sold to Bloomberg, L.P.)
posted by Jahaza at 9:17 AM on February 15, 2011


Best answer: The Economist for sure.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:35 AM on February 15, 2011


Best answer: I'd say the Economist, the Financial Times, and Barron's. I'm not too impressed with Bloomberg Newsweek.

There are also tons of blogs out there, which may be useful.
posted by dfriedman at 9:43 AM on February 15, 2011


Best answer: Investor's Business Daily will make you stupid. Seriously. The amount of blatantly wrong information published by them makes one question their basic intelligence.

Just as one example, they wrote scathing articles about heath care claiming that Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance in the UK because the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

They seemed to totally unaware that Hawking was born and lived his entire life in the UK, not the U.S., and has always gotten his care through the NHS.

Apparently they were fooled by his lack of a British accent.
posted by JackFlash at 10:16 AM on February 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


Best answer: nthing the the Economist-- I read it for nearly all my news.

What financial decisions do you make after reading the news? This could help people give better answers.

You mention worries and anxieties, which sounds like no fun and makes me wonder what your investment strategy is. IANA financial advisor, but my understanding is that investing based on daily news is bad because:
1. hedge funds with trading algorithms react to market news faster than you
2. news headlines cause emotional reactions that can make you do dumb things
3. you end up churning/trading a lot
4. all of the people I know who trade individual stocks seem to lose money most of the time.
I hope you have some sound worry-based investment strategy that's worked for you in the past (buying on bad news?).
posted by sninctown at 11:09 AM on February 15, 2011


Nassim Taleb would probably say none at all :)
posted by pharm at 11:57 AM on February 15, 2011


Nassim Taleb is an idiot. Just because he's right recently does not make him a Bob Shiller.
posted by jchaw at 1:56 PM on February 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


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