Jim posted a bit back about shutting off the financial news and watching lolcats. Synopsis: If the market news makes your stomach churn, just put your brain on autopilot for a while.
I've checked out ICanHasCheezburger and FailBlog and they're pretty amusing. No, actually, some of the posts are downright side-splitting. (This recent one is apropos.)
This avoids the real question, though: Why is the market news giving you an ulcer?
Maybe, because, you've lost a lot of money in the markets, and every day there's a several-hundred point drop in the Dow you lose even more?
Tuning out bad news because it reminds you of your paper losses is denial, plain and simple. Looking at funny pictures of animals won't bring the value of your portfolio up, and it's hours upon hours of wasted time that you could be investing in yourself. (I've learned this the hard way with failblog. Bad time-suck.) Invest in your job so that you can continue earning and, therefore, continue to invest. Or learn more about your investments to evaluate whether your money would be better elsewhere.
But please don't be scared of your portfolio! Learn about it, develop a plan for investing that you're comfortable with, and sleep well at night knowing you're doing what you can.
What separates us is what we do in our “spare” time. Time-sucks have a negative rate of return. There are enough negative rates of return going around without adding to them.
Great advice!!
It's always good ot not focus on the bad…
Don't read the newspaper. Don't watch TV news. No radio, either. Who cares what the pundits think? You don't need any talking heads in your life.It is all negative, gloom and doom. It will drag you down. After about 3 weeks, you will realize you don't miss any of it. Who needs it? You really don't.
There are many ways to invest in yourself outside of work and investing. I took up learning a foreign language, Chinese, which was extremely challenging and rewarding. Learn anything which may be applicable and you will soon wonder how you got along not knowing that skill.
A message like this one will not be transmitted by most writers of messages, because it is almost saying that someone should turn off reading or viewing of their content in order to go produce results on their own skill/activity. It is risky to tell one's viewers/audience/customers that they should cut off most of their wasteful viewing, because there is a slight chance they will cut off the reading of the material that told them that.