Up to date news…
Listen to this:
“Stock rally continued from yesterday afternoon. Market opened firm, bears attempted attacks early, particularly on US Steel based on recent drop in steel product prices. Attack quickly failed, Steel gradually gained, and gains spread through other leading industrials, many of which had large gains from recent lows.”
Take a wild guess at when this message was printed? “Gains in leading industrials. The market opened firm.” Is this message from last week or maybe from last month?
Neither of both, in fact this message is from: Friday, June 27, 1930
I discovered it at: newsfrom1930.blogspot.com
And even though these headlines are over 70 years old, what it says sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Back in 1930 -like today- nobody knew how the market would behave in the future. The day before those news the Dow made 2.3% and was at 220.58 Points, but Black Friday was still in peoples minds and the economy in a bad shape. From that standpoint you couldn’t tell, where the market would go.
Another example:
“Some traders believe the Dow Rails average closing below the 1929 low indicated bear market isn’t over. Many important bankers disagree, feeling it’s close to a bottom; Col. Ayres of Cleveland Trust anticipates “an abrupt and consequential upward movement of stocks and commodity prices … by Labor Day.” Bullish factors include lack of public participation in the Spring rally, low margin positions, and high short interest.” (June 26, 1930)
Throughout this message there are different opinions about the market reaching bottom or not, like we can see today on news-channels or read in newspapers and magazines. There are many experts out there. And I appreciate most of their analysis. But I never trust them blindly. Because there is no way to know what the market will do tomorrow or next week. You only can take a wild guess. And that would be speculating which is the nature of investing your money in the stock market. And that is a big difference to forecasting.
If you read a newspaper you will get dozens of news daily and by using a special news feed you will get hundreds of news. To sort out the ones important for your trading decisions has a lot to do with skill and experience and every trader needs to learn that. Like you could see in the 1930´s examples, news mostly with a general view on the market won´t be of advantage for your trading. More important are news that contain specific information, important for a single company, for it’s products and it’s cashflow. Or news able to move something in the market, everything else is only a description of the past. And unless it is necessary to be aware of the past, we trade the future and not the past.
So when trading news stick to specific news, filter general views out and don´t shoot for the opinion of anybody, make up your own mind, get your own picture of the current market situation and base your decisions on your own findings.