Call me a "Slow Adopter"

You might also call me "Captain Obvious."

I read newspapers. Specifically: Investors Business Daily, Wall Street Journal, and occasionally the local rag Chicago Tribune. And while I'm sure it hurts them to write it, I've read within their pages over the years about the sad decline of readership which is forcing many long-time newspapers to close up shop. The culprit? The evil free environs of this thing Al Gore invented - the Interweb or Internet or something like that. Something that one disgraced Senator (oxymoron?) once said: "...this internet thingee is all just pipes." Sorry I can't remember the Senator's name or what exactly his quote was - but you get my point.

The internet is making everything free. So why pay for a newspaper subscription when the same newspaper publishes all its content online for free? Perhaps here's another name you can call me: "Nostalgic." Maybe I just like getting ink smeared on my fingers and pants. Or maybe its because me first job as a child was as newspaper delivery boy for the Metro Community News and then The Buffalo News in Buffalo, NY. I dunno.

Well...all that changed today.

Surely, I'm not the first to notice this, in fact - I wouldn't be surprised if I was one of the last remaining holdouts. Yes, its true - everything I've ever needed to know can easily and quickly be found free on the internet! And more importantly, I can only be presented with articles I truly want to read.

I've had some time over the last week to really focus on my Trading business. While doing some online research, I've accidentally stumbled upon some very informative and helpful blogs. Reading these blogs has invigorated me and inspired me to seek out other similar blogs. And with each blog I read, I seem to always be coming across a cross-reference to another blog that I then immediately find useful and interesting. This branching out continues and now I'm finding that I have a pretty impressive stable of blogs that I now read almost religiously.

Its gotten to a point where I've now organized my blogs into 4 categories: Trading Blogs, Policy Blogs (politics), Business Blogs, and Thinking/Educational Blogs.

And I've noticed that in spending 30 minutes each morning parsing through this treasure trove of opinions, advice, strategy, and information - I find myself FAR more informed of the world around me than I would spending 2 hours with my newspapers. In addition to being better informed, I also feel like I'm getting EDUCATED each day as well - which I'm sad to say is a rarer occurrence when reading newspapers these days.

Yes, I'm a slow adopter. I know there are millions of "netizens" out there who have smugly known this for years. Sadly, this is just example #185 of how Sean is a slow learner. While I consider myself relatively smart as compared to the average American... my curse is that I learn slowly. Sometimes VERY FRUSTRATINGLY SLOWLY, as my nearly 12 year trading career can certainly stand as example #1.

My IBD subscription ends this week. The WSJ subscription will be ending within a month or two. I don't plan on renewing. Sorry editors - you warned me this day would come.

And finally, here is the site that finally put me over the edge: www.khanacademy.org. This site has the very real possibility of literally changing the way the world educates its citizens. I am BLOWN AWAY. Thanks Sal!!

PS....in a future post, I'll give a list of all the blogs I follow if anyone is interested.