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My favourite information sources – Part 2

In Part 2 of this series, we continue with more of my favourite sources of fundamental information. Another book that has greatly increased our understanding of what to expect in the future is Harry Dent’s The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Debt Crisis of 2010 – 2012. He bases his predictions for the future on demographics. The United Nations already has data on the age of the population of the whole world and there is a predictable spending pattern for each age group. By applying the spending patterns to the demographic data, Harry creates what he calls “Spending Waves” for each country. I wrote a post called Australia’s Spending Wave and outlook for 2010 and beyond based what I learned from this book in October 2009 and it remains one of the most popular posts on this blog.

Another great resource on the impact of demographics on the future is the report “The future of public debt: prospects and implications” from the Bank of International Settlement. You can read my insights and get the link to download the report in this post BIS report does not bode well for world economy. I have to warn you that the conclusions are pretty depressing especially if you are a tail end babyboomer like ourselves. Governments globally will not be able to afford to continue to provide the current level of pension payments. As cutting pension payments will either cause riots or get governments voted out, the most likely scenario is that they will continue to raise the retirement age so they can delay payment of pensions for as long as possible.

I also subscribe to a number of financial blogs which lead me to a lot of good information. Bloggers are constantly scanning the media for information that may be of interest to their readers. When they find a good article or video, they will create a blog post with a link to that information. There are two main categories of financial blogs. The first category are “reporter style” blogs that just reports the information. Some popular reporter style blogs I subscribe to are:

1. The Big Picture Blog (good one if you like to watch videos rather than read)
2. The Zerohedge Blog

The second category of blogs are “analytical style” ones where the bloggers would also provide some of their own insights and analysis as well. Some of my favourite bloggers in this category are:

1. Mike “Mish” Shedlock’s Global Economic Trend Analysis Blog. Mike covers general economic issues both in the US and globally and keeps a close eye on developments in Australia and China.
2. Greg Atkinson’s Shareswatch Blog. Greg is an Australian who is lives in Japan and provides a global perspective on developments in Australia which is refreshing compared to the Australian-centric views that you get in the local media.
3. Simon Johnson’s The Baseline Scenario. This blog was a great resource that helped me understand the implications of the European debt crisis and it provided a lot of information that I used in the series of blog posts I wrote about the crisis starting with this post in Feb 2010 Should Australians worry about the European debt crisis? As an MIT economics professor and a former chief economist of the IMF, Simon had a very good understanding of how serious this debt crisis is and how it is likely to play out. It was amazing to watch things unfold exactly as Simon said they would in the first few months of 2010.

Some blogs publish a large number of posts per day and one can suffer from information overload if you subscribe to too many blogs. A good method I like to use to keep abreast of the latest postings is to subscribe to their RSS feeds and use Google Reader to keep track of my blog subscriptions. When I have a spare hour or two, I will go into my Google Reader and just scan all the new postings in each blog. I read only the posts that are of interest to me and then just click on the “Mark as read” button. I try to clear the unread items in my Google Reader every few days, just like my email inbox. If you do not know what RSS or Google Reader is, don’t feel bad as most people don’t. I also did not know what it was until I got started in the world of blogging. Below is a video put together by Gideon Shalwick, one of my blogging mentors that will explain what RSS is and how you can set up your own Google Reader account. Its a great way of keeping up to date with your favourite blogs / websites and you can use it to keep track of updates of this blog as well. Click on this link to sign up for your RSS Feed for SMSF Investment Strategies blog. Enjoy!

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