if it's printed, it's old news

Barry Ritholtz writes a series for theStreet.com called the Apprenticed Investor. Basically lessons for young inexperienced investors. His latest piece is so dead on. He talks about how 'news' is always backwards looking. It's stale and therefore not useful for making forward looking investment decisions.

"Worse yet, old news can have an impact on your thought process. That's why I read The Wall Street Journal on the train home, and not on the way to work. Why? It forces me to recognize that the news is stale, and I avoid allowing it to influence my decision-making process. Instead, it becomes for informational proposes only (Yes, I really do this)."

I go a step further. I don't even read the WSJ. I've found WSJ articles are often completely misleading. I'm baffled sometimes by their article titles. I scan the front page in the morning at the newstand and that's it. To compensate I need news sources outside of the mainstream. This has become much easier to do with RSS syndication.