STREET DOGS

My job is essentially just corralling more and more and more facts and information, and occasionally seeing whether that leads to some action. But we don’t read other people ’ s opinions. We want to get the facts, and then think for ourselves. ”— Warren Buffett

“The media select, they interpret, they emotionalise and they create facts. The media not only reduce reality by lowering information density. They focus reality by accumulating information where actually none exists. A typical stock market report looks like this: Stock X increased because ... Index Y crashed due to ... Price Z continues to rise after ... Most of these explanations are post-hoc rationalisations. An artificial logic is created, based on a simplistic understanding of the markets, which implies that there are simple explanations for most price movements; that price movements follow rules which then lead to systematic patterns; and, of course, that the news disseminated by the media decisively contributes to the emergence of price movements. When the reality is that for most of the time, about almost everything that takes place in the financial markets — and elsewhere — nobody really knows. ”— Thomas Schuster

“We are in this sad state, because 200 years ago we invented a toxic form of knowledge called ‘ news ’. The time has come to recognise the detrimental effects that news has on individuals and societies, and to take the necessary steps to shield yourself from its dangers.”— Rolf Dobelli

“Does this mean we should stop paying attention to the world around us and simply ignore all financial news and trends? No. Of course not, ignorance is disastrous for different reasons; you have to know what’s going on. But the art of investing is not about figuring out what has happened. It’s about anticipating the future and creating the future that others will read about in The Wall Street Journal.”

Joshua Rogers /