June 5, 2025
Over the past few months, we've seen a marked uptick in the number of clients who are worried about the US economy. While everyone’s situation is unique, there’s a unifying theme to these conversations: increased consumption of financial news does not always correlate with increased understanding.
It all has me thinking about a Fitbit I received recently. I suppose I’m late to the party. Seemingly everyone I know sports a wearable health tracker, continuously monitoring everything from heart rate and body temperature, to sleep patterns and blood oxygen level. In certain targeted applications, these technologies are literally lifesaving. In one study, diabetics who wore continuous glucose monitors reduced the risk of severe hypoglycemia by 93%.1
However, as they have become more widely adopted, the value of ‘wearables’ has become harder to discern. What started out as simple nudges - “take a walk,” “drink something other than coffee” - is now a steady barrage of updates that most of us lack the bandwidth to meaningfully synthesize. In fact, there is an early body of evidence that wearables may cause an uptick in health-related anxiety without leading to better outcomes.2 Simply put, it’s hard to isolate signal from noise.
Following the financial news reveals a similar conundrum.
In theory, a steady stream of information should provide insight into the broader workings of the market. But markets are dynamic, driven as much by emotion as any unifying set of rules. As a result, there’s often a fine line between sober reporting and panic-inducing clickbait. What begins as a simple question – what’s going on with my investments? – easily devolves into confusion and anxiety, which portend bad decision-making. It’s a classic case of too much information overwhelming our ability to take a step back and look at things rationally.3
What helps is paying attention to the internal lens with which we try to make sense of the markets. The next time you start scrolling through the news on your iPhone, pause for a moment and ask: Am I seeking to learn something new about finance and investing? Am I approaching this in a spirit of modest intellectual inquiry? If the answer is no, maybe it’s time to flip to the sports section. The Stanley Cup is in full swing, after all.
Making a study of how you respond to the news can provide invaluable insight into your strengths and weaknesses as an investor, optimally helping you make decisions that your future self will appreciate. No batteries needed.
What I’m reading: Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio.4 Dalio proposes that empires have risen and fallen in the past according to specific patterns, and careful analysis of these patterns can be used to predict the future. Chiefly, he argues that unrestrained debt and unresolved social/political conflicts ultimately lead to great power decline. His books tend toward the ‘single theory that explains everything’ side, but they have caused me to think more critically about the potential long-term impacts of our national debt. It’s not exactly reading at the beach, so unless you enjoy dense tomes with lots of charts, save this one for the fall.
- Seth Gillim
1. Manov AE et al. (2023). Effectiveness of Continuous Glucose Monitoring Devices in Managing Uncontrolled Diabetes Mellitus. Cureus, 15(7): e42545. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.42545
2. Vincent, J. (2024, June 4). The Apple Watch, Oura, and the race to track your blood sugar. Vox. https://www.vox.com/technology/414264/apple-watch-oura-diabetes-blood-sugar-rfk-maha
3. Daniel Kahneman argues in his seminal 'Thinking Fast and Slow’ that ‘rational’ investor behavior is nearly impossible when it’s your own money on the line.
4. Dalio, R. (2021). Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail. Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster.
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