A Definitive Guide To Fixing Your Information Diet For Markets

I think the best way to change how you think is to fix your information diet. This means changing your default feeds of social media and phone-scrolling towards the actual content you want to see.

I like to subscribe to newsletters and consume articles to an account specially set aside for reading in the morning or during commutes. This soaks up all the excess time when you're waiting about in the day, like while waiting for the bus or when you're in a queue.

In my opinion, it's much better since otherwise I'll fall prey to the unstructured and unintentional attention-seeking media feeds like reels on Instagram. That's not really worth it.

Financial Market Newsletters

You should read financial markets since they capture, in one of the most applied ways, potential threats to the global economy. All the geopolitical posturing, threats, and political-economic risks of our global economy can be captured in some form by financial market analysis.

The benefit is that it's not as dry or removed as academic literature. While political science and economic books are helpful to understand new trends - financial markets are on the other end of the spectrum, where they really try to capture in these risks and opportunities in the most tangible manner.

And you should value this tangible focus because it's the intersection between ideas and application - financial markets are one very real way for real-life impact to occur. When new information is digested, investor opinions shift, which alters prices - and prices are really important since they dictate how resources in our world get allocated and moved around.

So you should care because it's first a representation of immediate impact on the world, and second because the urgency of markets makes for incredibly motivated and intense analysis.

1. Points of Return with John Authers: For global market analysis and investing strategies. Key focus on macroeconomic trends. So I use this to keep updated on global market movements.
2. Money Stuff with Matt Levine: For corporate finance, which is more about law, securities trading, and the wacky cases of fraud that emerge from then. Read this to understand how the law intersects with securitisation and markets. It focuses on the structuring of agents, their incentives, and the rules that securities are packaged with - also it's a hilarious and witty read.
3. 5 Things to Start Your Day: This is great for quick updates on market movements and news relevant to the sphere of the world you are in, depending on which region you choose. I like to pair this with the Economist's World In Brief newsletter.
4. The Everything Risk with Edward Harrison: Read this for more forecasting and long-term threats to markets. This is cool since it is more forward-looking and looks at how different mechanisms might unfold. Read this to keep an eye on what's the next big threat or thing. Also read this to know how you or consensus views might be wrong.

You can find the links for the above newsletters at the page below.

Besides Bloomberg, there are also a bunch of cool substacks out there:

5. The Diff: Read this for technology platform economics and how companies operate. It links to many good articles and other books that focus on trading strategies people come up with, how markets create interesting incentives, and general trends.
6. Capital Gains: Read this for focus on core concepts in finance. Inspecting the concepts links to real world phenomena. It also inspects how strong these concepts are instead of taking them for granted.
7. Adam Tooze from Chartbook: Really broad and cool collation of charts about economic phenomena on the state level. Such as Chinese domestic economics and domestic industrial manufacturing. Very good value in broad international references, which maintains a grip on the global view instead of an American-centric myopia.
8. Doug O'Laughlin from Fabricated Knowledge: A focus on semiconductor companies and how to see them as an investor. Good since semiconductors are incredibly relevant today. You learn about the technology, the use-case of information processing, and company profiles.
9. Aswath Damodaran: The person who literally wrote the book on valuation. Teaches at Stern at NYU. Securities valuation, how firms should be looked at, and valuation as a whole is what you will learn. Rely on him like a very good textbook to truly grasp how to come to an opinion of what something is worth. After all, we all need to actually articulate our opinions into an actual stance worth taking. You do that by valuing something and seeing if that agrees or disagrees with consensus views. His blog is also very good and he has lectures up on YouTube that everyone should watch.

On to current affairs: Current affairs is somewhat related to investing, but more about political developments and social issues too. Clearly, they intersect and to me if you want to have an accurate view of the world - you need to read around to understand all these different spheres. They're all interrelated.

10. The Economist's World In Brief: Get a quick update on the top movements in the world entire that are significant. Includes political phenomena, economic crises, decisions of key firms, and geopolitics. It truly helps you get a handle on how the world turns. Honestly, if you can, just subscribe to the entire magazine for all their weekly issues.
11. Bismarck Analysis: About geopolitical strategy imperatives. Helps you see what great-power competition is and how it shapes markets at times. You get a view of the causal chain from geopolitical strategy down to decision-making, and how firms are affected.
12. Timothy Snyder: Mostly about political philosophy and history on Europe. Recent focus on the Ukraine-Russian war. Helps with undertanding the psyche, development of political ideas, and how they manifest at the state level. A good insight into how fundamental ideas and civic values are to different societies.
13. Matthew Yglesias from Slow Boring: American politics analysis - mostly about the practice of political parties in America trying to court voters, and what voters think. Very interesting from an outside perspective - and relevant to understand the domestic interactions in one of the great powers of this world.

The rationalist community has some interesting bits sometimes, and it's more theoretical and fun to read - where you get into the odd interplay between rationality and how it's applied. This helps with frameworks to evaluate the world.

14. Astral Codex Ten: Wide ranging pieces on rationality and decision-making. it gets into reasoning and how that manifests itself in healthcare practice, economic policy, and greater ideas of AI and other topics.
15. Farnam Street: Straight up frameworks and models on how to think and approach the world. Helps with being able to interpret new situations.

Policy is super helpful and can lead to a better world. These publications focus on actually building a better world. To do so requires and understanding of the landscape we inhabit, what problems are really about, and sensitively building towards a policy that can be actuated. This is one of my favourite categories of newsletter to read.

16. Works In Progress: Policy ideas and new technologies that can improve our world. Forward looking in tone. Read to understand how the world can and is being made better.
17. Asterix Magazine: Similar to Works In Progress, but longer firm and also very forward looking. It's exciting to read because it links to developments in the making.
18. Hannah Ritchie: Data and arguments on how to make a sustainable world. Key address of the economics and underlying structure to transition our economies.
19. Future Perfect by Vox: Addresses new technology and how we should design our societies in response. Includes pieces on how science is conducted, and social issues in the current day.

Lastly, we come back to trading ideas which are more focused on how economic opportunities arise. Read this to know the minute-by-minute development of markets. While prices are just numbers, they can be the manifestation of many people's opinions - which is helpful to know. After reading the above, the price movements can make more sense too.

20. ExecSum: For headline roundups, general price movements, and deal flow in M&A and investments. Helpful to know what other people are generally looking at too.
21. The Daily Peel: Moderate length description articles of current market mechanisms.
22. Axios Pro Rata: Venture deals and acquisitions.

Some extras depending on your interest are below:

• Marc Rubinstein from Net Interest: Notes from a top investment-analyst who worked at a hedge fund and has amazing ideas.
• Stratechery: Industry expert knowledge of the technology sector.
• Bay Area Times: AI and technology updates for development and comparisons.
• Not Boring: Future looking issues and focuses on early stage companies that are focused on future technology. This includes energy, manufacturing, and aerospace.

That's it. The next steps are to read heavy books, get into the literature, and develop a deeper understanding of the world.

Something I'm exploring will be a sort of open source syllabus or nano-reading lists sorted by topic. I think that could be helpful for people to get up to speed.

It might seem like a lot, but at the end of the day I say: Do you want to know what it's all about, or not? If you do, then just read it - you can do that right now.