The Online Investing AI Blog

Last week, I sent a quick New Year’s note to three of my favorite authors, Tim Sanders (Love is the Killer App),  Dan Pink (Johnny Bunko),  and Leonard Mlodinow (The Drunkard’s Walk). And guess what? Within an hour, all three had responded. How awesome is that!

So, that really got me thinking. The Internet has made two way communication not only possible  but fast. In the olden days, people would send letters by mail written by hand or computer. I think the vast majority of authors did not have the time or energy to respond to nearly all of this mail.

But times have changed. Now it is quick, easy and free. So authors can quickly and easily have two way communication with their audience.

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Accelerating Technology, Great Books, Internet blogs, books, communication, connection, dan pink, Internet, leonard mlodinow, newspapers, technology, tim sanders, twitter

Most people who start out investing are interested in learning about specific strategies. They learn about the details of rates of return, and the differences between mutual funds and buying individual stocks. They find out about the requirements for getting a mortgage, and how to deal with the issues related to rental property.

There is one small challenge to this approach. Before we can succeed with any of these individual strategies we have to have the right mindset. It’s like planning a long road trip before making sure our car will make it. Before we get in our car and start driving, we need to make sure that there is enough oil and coolant, and that the brakes are OK. We wouldn’t want to get stuck in the middle of the desert because there wasn’t enough coolant.

Yet this is exactly what most people do when they start investing. Without having the right mindset, we just start out by buying stocks or mutual funds. The problem is that our mindset is the ultimate source of all of our decisions. We will not be able to successfully make investment decisions until we set our brains up for financial success.

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Great Books, Investing, Money, Success abundance, blogs, Investing, mindset, Money, newspapers, poverty, real estate, wealth

Today I noticed the Los Angeles Times, the local newspaper. It’s important to say that I noticed it, and not that I read it. I don’t enjoy reading any newspapers, because they are full of killing, destruction, negativity, and bad news of every kind.

The interesting thing about the newspaper, is that it’s practically gone. Each section was just a few pages. A year or two ago, the newspaper seemed to be pretty much the same as in the pre-Internet era. But quite recently, it seems to have been reduced to a mere shell of its former negative self.

It’s pretty natural for a 20th century technology like newspapers to disappear. Not only has the Internet made them completely irrelevant, but there are a few factors in particular that are at work.

The first is the power of the blog. Since you’re reading this, you understand that anybody can distribute their own articles, and even their own newspaper, for free using a blog. I wonder how many people who first saw the blog understood the revolutionary web 2.0 power it would exert.

Another important player is the Wikipedia factor. Just a few years ago, the idea of an expert doing the writing was important. The Encyclopedia Britannica was edited by scholars. The newspaper was written by accredited reporters. But the paradigm of having an expert at all has disappeared. Now we have the whole group being the expert, and there is no need for a single writer.

The environments is also moving to the forefront of people’s minds. It seems pretty silly to kill millions of trees and pollute the environment to deliver information on paper on a daily basis. It makes about as much sense as sending a telegram.

So what does this mean for you? This means that anybody can succeed by riding the trends. People who were investing in newspapers a few years ago lost money. But many people who invested in themselves, started a blog, sold stuff on eBay, or pursued any number of Internet businesses had a great chance at making money.

Accelerating Technology, Business Strategy, Investing, Success 20th-century, blogs, eBay, future, Internet, making money, newspapers, Success, trends

The recent run up in gas prices has created a bonanza for the media. The reason for this is that newspapers, online news outlets, and nightly news programming is 99% bad news. There is even a saying, “No news is good news.” I guess people say that because nearly all news distributed through the media is bad.

If I look at the top 3 news items on the front page of Yahoo right now, I see 3 pieces of bad news. The topics are:

• A hostage and terrorism
• Iran’s nuclear program and potential conflict
• The price of oil and supply disruption

Consider this headline:

Oil drops sharply as worries about supply disruptions ease

In fact, they have even taken good news and turned it into bad news! The story is that the price of oil has gone down, but the headline focuses on what the problemcould be: supply disruptions. By focusing on potential future problems, this headline generates fear in the mind of the reader.

Why is the media always about bad news? Because bad news sells. If you walk by a newspaper stand and the headline says, “Nice weather today and everything is fine,” then you will probably keep walking. But it says, “Thousands at risk from flash floods and firestorms!” Now, they have given you a reason to buy the newspaper. We want to know what will happen to all those unfortunate people.

The challenge with negative media is that it has a powerful effect on its audience. Most people are totally unaware, but everything that we hear and see is forever recorded inside of our unconscious mind, and affects us for a long time. When we take in negative information it becomes a part of us and makes us more negative.

It turns out that the recent rise in gas prices is not bad news at all. It is totally natural. America has had the lowest prices in gas for decades, and the American public was totally unaware. In most other countries, gas cost at least twice as much as it did in the U.S. Even in developing countries, where the average income is far less than in America, gas cost twice as much. Americans have enjoyed the benefits of incredibly cheap gas for a long, long time, and didn’t even know it!

Its much easier to sit down on the sofa and watch the 6 o’clock news than it is to go to another country, rent a car, and see what it is like to drive around in another country. Most Americans have not even found out how much gas costs in other countries, let alone actually going to another country and seeing for themselves.

All this to say that the media has used gas prices to sell newspapers and increase viewership. But they have done nothing to help Americans understand that they have had a free ride for a long, long time.

Business Strategy gas, gas prices, media, news, newspapers