Investing For Dummies®, 5th Edition

Chapter 16. Selecting Investing Resources

In This Chapter

• Overcoming information and advice overload

• Evaluating investing resources

In the past, finding financial information was much simpler, largely because the available resources were limited. You could subscribe to publications such as Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine for general money issues and a local big-city newspaper for daily stock prices. The hard-core investor had The Wall Street Journal delivered daily.

Times have changed, though. Today's investor faces information overload. Radio, television, magazines, newspapers, books, the Internet, family, friends, neighbors, and cabdrivers — everywhere you turn, someone is offering investing opinions, tips, and advice. You can't pick up a newspaper or magazine or turn on the television or radio without bumping into articles, stories, segments, and entire programs devoted to investment issues.

Chosen wisely, the best investing resources can further your investment knowledge and enable you to make better decisions. Because investment information and advice is so widespread, and constantly growing, knowing how to sift through it is just as important as hearing what the best resources are today. Throughout the rest of the book, I name the best investment resources that I'm familiar with, but in this chapter, I explain how you can separate the good from the mediocre and awful.

Dealing with Information Overload

Early in the year 2000, one of my clients, Roseanne, called me in a near ...