I used to regularly peruse several websites that offered free investing and finance news.  But most of those once-free sites have become increasingly hidden behind paywalls.  I’ve opted to not pay for content that I once got for free because, as a rule, I’m a pretty stingy bastard.

However, many of these sites continually advertise that their new content is worth more than ever before.  I suppose that these news operations could be spending their new subscription money on better journalists and more in-depth reporting, which could conceivably increase the value of their content.

So, I’ve found myself wondering what if anything I’m missing by not paying for investing news.

A Trial Run

Accordingly, I just signed up for a one-month-for-$1-dollar offer from Marketwatch, which also gave me access to some additional Barron’s content.

Once my free month is up, they want $23 per month for continued access!  To a stingy guy like me, that seems pretty steep.  I regularly pay for and watch entertainment content from Netflix and Hulu at about half that price.  So, as a value proposition, am I likely to spend twice the amount of time surfing Marketwatch as watching Netflix?  I’ll come back to this question at the end of this post.

With my temporary access to this pricey content, I thought I’d review it from the perspective of mindful investing.  In other words, will this news help me with my long-term investing and retirement plan, which is built on a foundation of rationality, empiricism (evidence-based), humility, and patience?  Or perhaps more to the point, will access to breaking news help me with the few regular short-term decisions that are part of a mindful investing plan such as rebalancing, re-investing, and adjusting withdrawal rates now that I’m in retirement?

Testing the Waters

With these questions in mind, I browsed Marketwatch and Barrons over a few days to support my review of investing news in today’s post.  I should note that my intent is not to scrutinize or criticize Marketwatch in particular but to use it as one obvious example of subscription investing news.  I’m pretty sure that Marketwatch’s content is superior to some sites and worse than some others.  But it’s a site that I’ve known for many years, and I’ve found at least a few nuggets of useful information there as some of my past links to Marketwatch would suggest.

For each article that attracted my eye¹, I’ll give you the headline, a very brief summary of the key concepts from the body of the article, and my brief assessment of its usefulness from a mindful investing perspective.  Generally, I ignored articles that appeared to be only distantly related to the issues of finance, investing, markets, or the economy.  I also passed over the popular “Moneyist” column, which seems to be a Dear Abby column for personal finance disasters.

The Articles

HEADLINE 1: The biggest risk facing investors this earnings season is lurking just beneath the surface.

Key Concepts: Data from the “sensitive” travel and leisure sector imply that the economy, in general, is weaker than it otherwise seems.

Usefulness: The article contains some relatively detailed data on the health of many companies in the sector as compared to recent stock price changes.  Here’s an example chart from the article.

Beyond knowledge for knowledge’s sake, there’s nothing actionable or particularly helpful about this information from a mindful investing perspective.  That’s because mindful investors know that picking individual stocks is usually a loser’s game, whether we’re talking about the specific companies listed in this article or those that were left out.

Further, we know that trying to predict the stock market, much less individual stocks, based on the apparent direction of the economy is pretty impossible.  A good example is my annual update of stock market forecasts, which for four years running have hugely underpredicted actual stock market performance.  Usefulness grade for this article: C.

HEADLINE 2: Opinion: September was a terrible month for stocks. Here’s what you can expect in October.

Key Concepts: Historical data show that October is the most volatile month for stocks as shown in this graph from the article.

However, two other “common” views that October 1) has the most “trend changes” and 2) marks the end of the “unfavorable season” for stocks that supposedly starts in May are not supported by the data.

Usefulness: This is an opinion piece by Mark Hulbert, who usually offers a pretty data-centric (mindful) point of view.  But in this piece, Hulbert is swimming through data that are irrelevant to the mindful investor.  Given that mindful stock investors are long-term investors (5 to 10 years minimum), monthly volatility data can be safely ignored.

Even worse, Hulbert suggests that investors with a risk appetite could invest in October in short-term funds that benefit from increased volatility.  But mindful investors know that short-term market timing is impossible.  They also know that intra-monthly trading of stocks is more akin to gambling than investing considering that stocks have historically gone down 37% of the time on a monthly basis but have gone down only 6% of the time on a 10-year basis.

The only mindful thing offered in this article is this aside: “[Don’t]…let yourself be spooked by the increased volatility.  Hold on tight and don’t get thrown off of your investment strategy.”  One wonders why the article needed to say anything more.  Usefulness grade: F.

HEADLINE 3: Why Facebook stock is still a buy despite controversies.

Key Concepts: A slew of recent Facebook controversies have raised questions about its long-term value.  Interviews with several finance firms indicate that professional investors still see Facebook as a solid buy.

Usefulness: You can probably predict my opinion on this one.  Because mindful investors buy and hold a moderately diversified set of low-cost index funds, information on individual stocks is pretty useless.

Even worse, are we supposed to make investment decisions based on a few one or two-sentence quotes from the professional investors who happened to answer the phone that day?  And mindful investors know that professional stock pickers rarely if ever beat the market.  So, why do we care about their opinions at all?  Usefulness grade: F.

HEADLINE 4: Robots are hiding 27 million workers from employers who need them.

Key Concepts: A Harvard Business School study found that applicants’ resumes are often filtered out by software before a human ever sees them because the software often misunderstands the nuances of an applicants’ qualifications.  Advice is offered for job seekers to combat this problem.

Usefulness: I clicked on this one because the headline elicited visions of robots holding job seekers in prison cells.  Again, for the sake of knowledge, this was a somewhat interesting read.  And if you’re an investor who’s also looking for a job, this article had some concrete advice on how to get your resume past the robots and into human view.

However, the article told me essentially nothing about investing.  And it didn’t attempt to hypothesize how this problem might impact the economy or markets going forward, which is probably a good thing given how difficult it is to predict the future.  Usefulness grade: C.

HEADLINE 5: What will the Fed do if the government hits the debt ceiling?

Key Concepts: The article provides a status update on the debt ceiling situation and its importance.  The Fed has three main options for mitigating the effects of Congress missing the deadline, all of which have their own uncertainties and problems.

Usefulness: I picked this article out of general interest that I might learn something new about how the Fed and wider government operations work (or fail to work) together.  The status update on the debt ceiling offered nothing that I haven’t already seen in free generic news.

The Fed’s potential options were all discussed in pretty vague and jargony terms.  For example, phrases like the “new standing repo facility”, “reverse repo program”, and “lend against technically defaulted loans” were all left completely unexplained.  I guess this article was intended for the bond market and bank professionals only.  After wading through the gibberish, I was still able to glean a few tidbits that were new to me.  Usefulness grade: D.

Conclusions

I’ll stop my review at five articles because the other articles I read all pretty much fell somewhere within the same range of usefulness.  I didn’t find any content on these few days that stood head and shoulders above the rest in terms of usefulness to a mindful investor.  But in the past, I have found some pretty useful information at Marketwatch on occasion.  And I’m going to assume that these rare golden nuggets still show up at Marketwatch now and again.

So, would I pay $23 per month for Marketwatch once my trial offer has expired?  Definitely not.

Based on the content I’ve seen so far, and assuming those golden nuggets still pop up occasionally, it seems like about 10% of the content is potentially useful to a mindful investor like me.  In other words, I’d probably be willing to pay about $2 a month for regular access to Marketwatch.

And $2 per month seems about right when I consider how much time I might spend surfing Marketwatch as compared to other entertainment² options like watching Netflix or Hulu.  I roughly estimate that I’d spend about one-fifth or less of the time on Marketwatch as compared to watching movies or TV series.  (And one-fifth of around $10 per month for a streaming service equals $2 per month for Marketwatch.)

However, the math of value propositions is entirely subjective.  So, if you’re someone who hates watching TV but loves reading almost everything vaguely related to investing, then $23 a month for Marketwatch might be a bargain for you.  But I’m going to wait until prices come down a whole bunch before I become a customer.  Given that price inflation is the norm, I may be waiting forever.

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1 – I freely admit that my interest in and subsequent selection of articles to review here is entirely subjective to my tastes and predilections, which are at least partially revealed by the content of Mindfully Investing.

2 – Yes, I consider reading and learning about investing “entertaining”.