Read The Business Newspaper

When you start your career in financial markets, the first thing recommended by all mentors and market experts is to read the Pink paper. You should be reading the business newspaper. At first, It will be just numbers, loads of articles and a complete plethora of information which might be difficult to understand and relate as how this data can be used to predict the financial market. 

It may seem that research by reading a newspaper is more backward looking rather than predictive. It shall give insights and  news on what has happened already. What is going to happen in the future – That information may be absent while reading the newspaper. 

The take away from this is that when you start to read the financial journal regularly, you would realise that you are up to date with what is happening in the corporate world and the capital markets. It will help you have an edge over your friends. Moreover you can definitely impress people in any group discussions or social gatherings. We all read newspapers in different styles. There are people who read the newspaper from start to end from word to word as “Reading is definitely easier than critical thinking”. 

On the other hand there are people who read many newspapers in a very short time. The point is, it’s not only important for every financial market participant to read but also judge and filter what is important and has relevance and rest to move on . To do this skilfully we should always ask three questions. 

1. Is the article based on opinion or facts?
2. Does the article talk of what has already happened in the past or does it predict the future?
3. Will the article have a long term or a short term impact on any Asset class? 

To make this task more organised, we can divide the newspaper into a few broad categories, and classify which news to read and which news are the ones, we can avoid.