How and Why You Should Keep Up with Financial News

With many different resources available to guide your continued financial education, it can be overwhelming to figure out the best course to stay up-to-date. Without spending hours and hours each day trawling through every piece of economic news, you come across.

Keeping yourself in the financial loop is essential to guide your investment decisions. It provides a ‘big picture of the economy, allows you to keep an eye on the performance of different sectors and industries, and the social conditions that could influence aspects of the financial world.

The value of an investment is influenced by the release of news itself, as good news for one sector or company will raise demand – and the price – of that type of stock, while their value will decrease due to bad press.

With this in mind, you should always try to maintain a well-rounded knowledge of the events that could influence your investments.

Here are five things you can do to achieve a knowledge of finance that will enable you to make the best possible investment – and other financial – decisions.

Prioritise data.

Anyone can have an opinion on financial events and publish these thoughts online – however, you should only consider taking these opinions seriously if data back’s them. This will help you separate the useful and the not-so-useful coverage of financial topics to make decisions using only the best information.

It would help if you looked at government economic reports – which cover the economy’s performance, specific industries and consumer behaviour – and the quarterly financial reports of businesses you’re thinking of (or already have) invested in to ensure their growth justifies your investment.

Reading the primary sources supplying data for articles – such as academic papers and studies – can also help to ensure the financial conclusions you draw are based on hard facts.

Consider using an RSS reader or news aggregator.  

By using an RSS or news aggregator, you’re able to save time and make your continuous financial education as efficient as possible by compiling the news sources you want to stay on top of into one place.

Suppose you choose to download an RSS reader. In that case, you can pick which RSS feeds you want to stay on top of, and these should include financial staples such as the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Investor’s Business Daily, as well as finance and investment blogs. So that all content from your preferred news sites, blogs and other internet locales are accumulated in one page, making it easy to see what’s new across all your specified news sources.

Likewise, for those who prefer not to use an RSS reader, news aggregators act as a hub for many different news sites and publications, so you can quickly look through the latest headlines from numerous news sources at the same time. Check our mobile app here as well.

Research both the consensus and the opposition.

When you’re reading up on the latest financial news, you’ll often already have your own opinions before you start researching more deeply into the subject.

For this reason, you should make sure you have a good grasp of the common opinion – to see how and why it differentiates from yours if it does, and to enable you to confront the weaknesses in your financial theories.

Moreover, even if your views are aligned with the general consensus about a topic, you should research the opposition to bring to the forefront any variables you may not have considered, allowing you to gain greater perspective and make more fully-informed finance decisions.

Use social media to your advantage.

For the simple reason that it’s a lot quicker to write a social media post than it is to write a full-length article, you can often get the most recent financial news via the social media of financial publications.

Moreover, businesses typically post about any new developments or products coming up on their social media first. Therefore, it’s a good idea to follow the organisations you’ve invested in – or are considering investing in – being among the first to receive news that could influence the public’s investing behaviour.

Set Google alerts and employ a news ticker.

Much of the financial world is influenced by the public’s release and consumption of news – often, as soon as that news is released.

For example, if a company releases an innovative new product, their stock prices are likely to increase, while news of disasters such as oil spills are likely to reduce the value of oil companies.

With this in mind – and to stay ahead of events that may affect the performance of your investments – you should set Google alerts for the financial topics most relevant to you and your investment choices.

Similarly, using a news ticker allows you to quickly glance at breaking news headlines as they come in – without having to manually check a news site – and stay aware of any events that could affect your financial health.