FYI: The five dirtiest words in personal finance are “now, next, best, top and must.”
As in “Five money moves to make now,” or “The best funds for the new year,” or, doubling up “The next move all investors must make.”
For years, lines like those — appealing to base instincts of consumers — were a staple of Money magazine covers. The magazine used focus groups to test for cover lines that would make its product jump off the newsstand, and the same basic themes came up again and again.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/when-money-runs-out-magazines-demise-puts-consumers-on-alert/
Comments
Some other things which helped shape my thinking back than were Andrew Tobias’ The Only Investment Guide You’ll ever Need and a recent book by John Bogle: Bogle On Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor. The WSJ was still pretty good reading. And, of course, Rukeyser’s weekly interviews with the likes of John Templeton / Perter Lynch were influential. Bill Fleckenstein had some good free columns online in those years and helped instill in me a wariness of markets (probably excessive) which still prevails today.