I assume that "The Economist" will keep one up to speed on the current state of the economy (that's just a guess though since I've never picked up an issue of the magazine myself). I think knowing exactly what's going on with economies throughout the world is an important part of being a trader. Actually, the Economist was recommended to me by a manager at a major Futures Trading firm (she dealt in t-bill trading)....i was interviewing for a possible position as a fixed income futures trader upon graduation. QUESTION: If I read "The Economist" regularly for the next year, will I have an understanding of how the financial markets move and what tends to move them? What benefits do YOU see to reading "The Economist" regularly for the next year, even if such benefits are not related to trading? Thanks
Bed time reading. You'll never learn any true trading "secrets". Just bits and pieces and an idea or two. Think of them as Vogue for traders
The way stock market moves is very different from the way economy moves and if you don't know that academic research is just discovering also see : http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21918 And if you don't believe it this is an exerpt from a trader analyst of an important bank who has written in a trading book (I translate from french in bad english): "The markets of long term rates are well correlated on a monthly basis INDEPENDANTLY of the ECONOMICAL ACTIVITY OF EACH COUNTRY... this means that the study of economical activity is not necessary for anticipating the behavior of Stock market. "
don't start off reading any magazines or major publications yet, you are new the the financial world, start by going to your local book store and find a book about how the market works and explains what certian things mean, if you start reading magazines and papers, your going to see all of these words, like yield, beta, p/e etc. that you are going to no idea as to what they mean, granted these things don't play a major role in everyday daytrading as much as they do with long term investing, but you still want to know what the hell is the people in the mags and papers are saying right? make sure you find a book about how the markets what, anything for beginners, after you understand that, then start looking at mags, tech analysis, if you start reading the wsj right now, you're not even going to get through the first page and say what the hell are they talking about, no sense in reading something you don't understand yet.
dude, i subscribe to 17 magazines and numerous newspapers. i read them all. knowledge is power in this game. not just market knowledge, but the ability to ascertain macro trends is KEY. voracious reading is one way to obtain this knowledge. AND not just the economist-- my readings of that rag show a clear agenda. best, surfer:eek:
Perhaps not the stock market but what about the forex, futures, commodity, and bond markets? I think economic trends can be used in these areas of securities trading. I don't think many people would disagree that relationships between bond behaviour and stock behaviour can and have been established. Therefore, it appears as if economic trends do, perhaps in an indirect way, become useful in stock trading as well (i.e. you can use economic trends to come to conclusions about the bond market and you can look at bond behaviour to determine stock behaviour, or to make plausible speculative plays). Also, just because a study of economical activity is not necessary for anticipating stock behaviour, doesn't mean that such study CAN NOT be used to anticipate stock behaviour, right?