My different stages in reading WSJ

Initial stage

I started to read WSJ with intention after the recommendation from a famous financial engineering program in US. It is said that reading WSJ is important for a graduate to find a financial job. Then I began to read articles on WSJ, but these articles were way long and took me half an hour to read. Some articles on the homepage seemed not interesting or related to me.  

Gradually as I spent more time on CFA preparation and solving technical problems in financial engineering, I read WSJ less than before. I skimmed headlines and only read interesting ones. As a result, my reading became more related to world news especially in East Asia which I am familiar with. Although I keep reading headlines on the homepage, I have less interest to read these unfamiliar and uninteresting articles.

Deep reading with guidance

I read more than 30 articles related to financial economics very carefully in the second half year of 2015 thanks to the requirement from my professor of financial economics course. I spent at least 1 hour to read and analyst an article and then linked some paragraphs to economics theories. What impressed me most was the game theory and two articles on guilty plea and athlete’s dilemma.

I consider these readings were effective and they helped me understand theories in real cases.

Reading WSJ proactively

WSJ is full of different type of news, it is my responsibility to find and read news related to my interest. I ask myself after seeing a headline: will I read this carefully or just skim it? High efficiency and effectiveness rely on my self-awareness of what topics may affect my key interests, and the first step is to clearly list my key interests which may be affected by news.

As a financial practitioner, I will use WSJ to have some view on what happens in the market. As an international student, I will focus on potential new immigration policy. As a person with interest in quantitative risk management, I will analyze the regulation change and potential effect on market. There are a lot more topics which I need to care about but the key is to link new information to my interest and do some forecast.

What I need to do more

I find reading US news sometimes not easy for or interesting to me. The key reason is that I am not that familiar with how US works, including its culture, organization of government, sports, law system, history, etc. With these knowledge, I may have more understanding or empathy on some hot topics in US. The love of sports in US is a great example which shows the difference from China. After two years’ living in US, I even shared happiness with strangers on the street of Chicago after Cubs winning the world series.