I started to tune out Drudge (and similar news sources) in 2013, because it was interfering with my thought process. Incidentally, 2013 was my best year in a long time, where I got balls––long Tesla (TSLA) and Solar City (SCTY) and Zillow (Z) and a bunch of stuff like that. I also haven’t wasted a bunch of money on S&P 500 puts in a while. I still pull up the Drudge Report from time to time, but only to see what fear he is peddling today (and if there are any canned food headlines).
I think your New Year’s investing resolution for 2016 should be to be very judicious about where you get your news. Try to get it from a range of sources, and not just one side of the political aisle.
I think it’s also important to get a lot of news from “mainstream” news sources, like the nightly news on television. They, too, have bias, but it is usually pretty easy to spot—and this is the closest approximation to what passes for the center these days. It’s also pretty entertaining.
The cable news networks add no value. They just tell you what you want to hear.
What you see and what you read becomes what you are. Not many people get rich being afraid. That’s a fact.
Jared Dillian
Editor, The 10th Man
Jared Dillian is editor of the investment newsletter Street Freak.