Basic Step to Becoming a Successful Investor

It could have been often said that the 1st step to becoming the best investor is an easy one -- switch off the Television.

Top financial channel -- as well as its competitors -- will only cause you to dumber as well as poorer.

This comes like a surprise to a lot of people. In fact, financial channels offer a steady stream of well-credentialed specialists, men and women with impressive titles from major firms. Nearly everyone hold PhDs, years of practice, or manage huge sums of money. They appear good. They sound sharp. They have insightful thoughts and reams of arcane investment data tripping off their tongues.

How might following to them possibly turn you a worse trader?

Because the unstated premise behind these programs -- that exist, obviously, to sell advertising -- is that investors could be in a near-constant position of reaction:

"The market is hitting a new high today. What should traders do now?"

"The Fed has left rates of interest unchanged. What should investors do at the moment?

"GNP was up an unexpectedly strong 3.8 percentage previous quarter. What should investors do now?"

They bring on an analyst with a bullish view as well as another with a bearish one -- on stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, interest rates, or the economy -- allow them to square off for a couple of minutes, followed by cut to commercials. After sometime later, they come back and perform it some more. This goes on every day, week after week, year after year.

Why do a lot of smart, talented, educated people spend many hours staring blankly at the tube?

The short answer, obviously, is we like it.

But do we, actually? Is watching TV more fulfilling than what you would be doing if you weren't?

If you receive particular about it, you will feel a bit ridiculous. For instance, perhaps you have told yourself something like:
Gee, I really need to get more exercise, however Dancing With the Stars is on in 10 minutes.
I promised my daughter I'd teach her how to play chess, but these Seinfeld re-runs are very funny. It is long past time I ended in to visit my aging grandmother, but I am unable to avoid the game!
I promised for myself I'd figure out how to play the piano this year, but in the week will be the finals of American Idol.
I really do like to plant that garden. But I am unable to miss my soaps.
If we're challenged, certainly, we've got lots of rationalizations.

Let a TV critic tell you that many programming is mindless junk and you'll point to the learning stuff on The History Channel, Discovery, or National Geographic, even if that's only a fraction of what you watch.

If he replies that you are still being subjected to hours of commercials each week, you tell him you tape the programs and fast-forward through them.

If he counters that taping only lets you consume more television, you'll always play your trump card: "Mind your business."

In fact, you're an adult. It is your life to live. You are able to spend it any way you desire.

But, between South Park and Grey's Anatomy, would you ever reflect on the way you're spending it?

Regardless how good the programming is -- and let's face it, several of it is excellent -- or else how rapidly you fast-forward from your commercials, the time you spend before the tube is time you haven't used up pursuing your goals, living out your goals, or just interacting with a different human being. If you are aged and companionless -- or housebound for some other reason -- that's different. Except that doesn't describe the majority of us.

Twenty-five years ago, Neil Postman warned of our consuming love affair with TV in Amusing Ourselves to Death. In book -- a jeremiad about the danger of turning serious conversations about politics, business, religion, and science into entertainment packages -- he argues that TV is creating not the dystopia of George Orwell's 1984 but rather of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World:

"Religious devastation is more more likely to appear from an enemy using a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not observe us, by his option. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. Whenever a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public discussion becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in brief, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk."

He concludes that we'd all be better off if TV got worse, not better.

As per A.C. Nielsen, 99 percent of American households use a TV set. Two-thirds have above 3. These sets are on an average of 6 hours and 47 minutes per day.

Forty-nine percentage of Americans polled say they spend a lot of time in front of the Television. It is not difficult to find out why. The average viewer watches on average 4 hours of TV each day. That is 2 months of non-stop TV-watching per year. For a 65-year life, one may have used 9 years glued towards the tube.

You by now know how little you will gain by watching much Television. But have you as well considered what it can be costing you?

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