Welcome to Scotch Street on the Rocks: stream-of-consciousness writing on finance “told through” a scotch.

Today’s stream-of-consciousness article is “told through” Jura Destiny. A peated whiskey from the isle of, you guessed it, Jura.  And, yes, it is located in Scotland…duhh.

Below the video is the article.  Here is the video taken leading up to writing the article, and as the article was written.

Scotch Street on the Rocks: Financial Blogging Under the Influence

Ok so here we go this is now stream-of-consciousness. Stream-of-consciousness writing means that you just write. You don’t stop you just write what comes to your head. I guess this isn’t pure stream-of-consciousness since I’m trying to write about a certain topic during my stream-of-consciousness but whatever it’s close enough, am I right? Soooo, what to talk about. Ok, I have been thinking a lot lately about CNBC and an observation I made recently so let’s talk about that observation. I realized that the people on CNBC are not the people we should be listening to. When I was learning about finance when I entered financial services back in 2007 I did my best to grasp what the hell was going on since we are bombarded with information, numbers, stock prices, just an inordinate amount of information and we have to figure out how to sift through all of this information and somehow develop an understanding of finance? It’s crazy and it’s extremely difficult. So years after starting to learn about the world of investing and Wall Street, I think my grasp of it is pretty decent. You know, not bragging here. I like the word braggadocio by the way. I think it should be used more in the US. Do they use that word in England? I’m not sure. Wait I’m completely off of my topic. Let me get back on track here…so ya back to CNBC. When you listen to CNBC you get all sorts of different commentators. Who in god’s name are we supposed to listen to? When one hour you could have 8 different opinions on one topic. Its head spinning! “The market will be flat this year”, next guy, “the market will be up 2% this year”, next girl, “the market is due for a bull run first quarter and flat through the end of the year as corporate profits are boosted by favorable winter weather on the west coast and a mild Florida rain and El Nino is still two years away so we factored that into our models of course”…..what in the world are you talking about?! How can so many of you people have a different opinion on the same thing? How am I supposed to learn about finance with all of you people? Should I even listen to you? It’s madness. So I finally figured out a few years into working in financial services the answers to these questions. My answer to the CNBC viewer and learner of finance is that you shouldn’t listen the folks on CNBC, or many of the articles you read. Reason is they are both using projections of short term (you should be investing for the long term I would hope) and they probably are going to change their projection in a couple months anyway and it’s impossible to follow all 8 of those people who are throwing out their opinion and follow up to see what they say two months down the road when they probably adjust their predictions. I guess what I am trying to say here, is that you are a long-term investor. If your retirement isn’t on the horizon, if the white sandy beaches of your 60’s and 70’s are still some years off, you are likely a net buyer of stocks. As a net buyer of stocks you shouldn’t care one iota what MANY of the people on CNBC say because they are investing with a completely different strategy. It’s not the strategy you should be using. You should figure out their strategy first. If their strategy is buy stocks and hold them for a very long time, they are using the strategy you should be using. If they are using a strategy of, “next quarter the market will be up” or down or whatever, you shouldn’t listen to them because they are not using a strategy you should be using. Ok that was a nice rant. Where do we go after that one. I think I just wrote 600 words against CNBC. But let me throw in a disclaimer, I love CNBC I watch it all the time. It’s entertaining. Every day there are probably a couple people who have a long-term approach to investing and their advice should be taken. It’s just the other times you regurgitate what you watch at the watercooler at work and you are doing it to try and sound cool. Nobody cares what the 200-day moving average looks like, Gary. Why should I care about that? You don’t like the 200-day moving average, fine, sell your shares. I’ll keep my shares, I’ll have more money than you in the long run, I’ll pay less transactions costs than you in the long run, and you can meet me back at this here water cooler in 5 years and I’ll guarantee I have more money than today by doing the tortoise, boring investing style, and your, hare, rapid information processing, terrible buy and sell strategy, will erode your wealth via frictional costs and bad market decisions. But, guess what Gary, I won’t say “I told you so” I’m just not that type of water cooler conversationalist. Hmmm, somehow I warped back to the CNBC talk again. I guess this post is mostly revolving around CNBC and maybe we should name this post How to find yourself through the noise of finance? How to educate yourself through the noise of finance? Maybe one of those two? Ok we will see, I think I’m actually going to title these Scotch Street posts based on the scotch I drink, should I add a title under it dealing with the topics I discuss? Or just go with the scotch in the title? Oh well I’m not sure and here I go again not talking about something finance related. I think we’re getting close to finishing here anyway, I need to refill my glass. Well, this was the first Scotch Street post. I have no idea if this is good, I’ll have to go read this now and see how it sounds. This Scotch Street thing could be a terrible idea by the way. I don’t know if this is stupid or ingenious. Oh well I guess we will see!

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Robbie Schultz!

Why did I add an exclamation mark there? Oh whatever I am going to keep it, it looks kinda nice.

Oh and one more disclaimer, I will be editing misspelled words and maybe a few grammatical punctuation things if they really make absolutely no sense.
Ok I’m out!