Which periodicals do you read ?

Just a short article today, it's been kind of frustrating that I have to rush my readings tonight for tomorrow's lesson, I was not aware of the readings until this afternoon and I am not the kind of guy to do work last minute.

Just want to share the periodicals I currently read :

a) Business Times and the Edge.

Local investors should do their best to read these two periodicals on the local market scene.

Having no money to invest for about 10 more months makes reading this no longer mandatory. I continue to read the Edge to track my current investments, sometimes a very in depth article appears and it allows me to decide whether to keep a stock holding. Given that most of my stocks are high yield, I generally try to ride out a rough patch rather than sell my holdings.

Currently, I read the Edge every Friday and pick up BT for the Saturday issue because of it's Leisure section which is quite fun to read.

b) The Economist

For years, I was unable to have a breakthrough with the Economist. It was a magazine I admired and the folks who read it on a regular basis always seemed to have a lot of substance.

But I always found the Economist to be very dry and struggle intellectually with the articles. Finance class only helped me cope with the Schumpeter section but I still skip anything on Africa and South America. ( Does a REIT investor in Singapore give a shit about Robert Mugabe ? )

If the Harvard Business Review could be such a compelling read, why is the Economist so boring ?

These days, I look forward to my copy of the Economist as it summarizes the big news of the week and it's analysis is incisive as ever. Compared to my legal case readings, The Economist is as exciting as a fantasy novel involving Driz'zt, Elminster and a neo-Otyugh in BDSM action ( In the case of the Schumpeter articles, with Elminster wearing only diapers).

Of course my rationale for my new found obsession with the Economist is that it is the preferred writing style of the folks who mark my essays.

c) Financial Analyst Journal and CAIA Journal of Alternative Investments

The biggest reason why I kept paying my CFA and CAIA  membership dues is that it comes with the Journals on investing. The papers are fairly hardcore but I was able to dive deep into various new age investment strategies. (  latest being a treatise on covered call strategies. )

This is really an extension of my CFA studies and my independent has kept me updated with techniques like fundamental indexation and synthetic annuities after all these years after leaving finance school.

Just don't ask me why I can handle FAJ but not the Economist.

d) Special Mention : Malaysia Edition of Personal Money

There used to be a reason for me to go to City Square Johor Bahru every month.

Sadly, Personal Money, a periodical from the same team who brought us the Malaysian Edge, has been discontinued. I was a quite a big fan because of the human element of the magazine.

There is a certain quality of a Malaysian financial periodical which treats their readers as ordinary human beings. Personal Money had articles on hipster cafes, cheap gadgets and Chinese Astrology whereas the Edge Singapore views investors as the regular Singapore Tatler types who are only into expensive watches and fountain pens. It is dehumanizing to think that investors only eat at restaurants which charge $300 per pop.

If anything,take this as an appeal from me - At the end of the day, no matter how numerical or analytical  we are, we are ultimately human beings.

Investors do not exist so that you can rub into our faces the Ferraris, Michelin 3-star meals and Mont-Blanc pens. I'm fairly immune to envy but I am aware that this lifestyle proposed probably prevents many of us from building a decent portfolio in the first place.

The state of local finance periodicals is currently just that - hardcore analysis and then pages and pages of horological pieces which costs more than stocks which was just analyzed.