Morning Brief: Economics
Free Alternative: The NYT Morning
First FT Americas
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Benefits: Roundup coverage of major headlines across all topics, with mild preference given to subjects in national politics and culture. One-stop newsletter to get caught up on the most pressing news of the day, regardless of sector.
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Downside: Not meant as an aid to any professional or academic interests, but rather as a substitute for cable news.
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FT’s top news stories from the Americas, plus analysis and commentary on the day's biggest global stories
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Downside: Some readers might find the dense format of the newsletter overwhelming, as it packs a substantial amount of info
GLOBAL ROUNDUP
About: These daily newsletters offer a broad view of the world, they are the starting point to morning reading, offering a sense of what’s important across countries, industries, and thematic areas.
General overviews are important to keep a reader well rounded and aware of trends and events that may not be directly within their focus but is still impactful or a broader topic of conversations.
Bloomberg Economics
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Benefits: Concise overview of Bloomberg's economic policy coverage that strikes a balance between policy and financial news.
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Downside: Summaries can lose breadth of accumulated knowledge if full stories aren't read. Selected stories can feel a bit desperate or stale, partly due to Bloomberg's naturally more financial coverage.
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Benefits: The most comprehensive assessment of key US economic data and news. Focuses on news in markets, the global economy, and US economic policy that is relevant to decision makers.
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Downside: Can drift more into financial coverage, is a good start but not complete coverage given the WSJ newsroom’s focus
CORE ROUNDUP
About: Thematic overviews roundup the most important stories from that news cycle on a specific region or topic area. These newsletters will often summarize that publication’s most important stories for the day, giving you a sampler of what’s going on across a specific topic.
These expose the reader to educationally valuable stories and sub-focuses they’d otherwise not click on without a high time commitment.
AGGREGATOR
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Daily roundup of headlines across the FT's different coverage areas.
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Downside: Can be difficult to comprehend when read given the lack of context or content for any story
About: Aggregators roundup article links, often providing just the headlines. These are useful for outsourcing curation of niche stories aligned with your core interest. These aggregators are also useful for gaining broader situational awareness even if it's just a trend or event is gaining coverage
THEMATIC TARGETED
About: Targeted newsletters are formatted similarly to thematic overviews with selected stories synthesized into their core details mixed together with some relevant stats, blurbs, or by-lines from across the focus area. The major difference is that thematic overviews cover everything in a broad area, targeted newsletters look at a specific trend, sub-region, or sector in greater depth. These are often used by professionals in specific spaces to stay up to date with their fields.
ECONOMIC POLICY
Morning Money
Axios Macro
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Daily roundup of the most important economics events and how business, policy and markets collide.
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Examines the latest finance politics and policy news with insiders takes on finreg and US macro policy
FINANCIAL ECONOMICS
Briefings
ING Daily Roundup
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Daily roundup of Danish bank ING's comprehensive and detailed financial and economic coverage from key developed markets.
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Goldman's flagship newsletter delivers you the latest insights on markets, industry and finance
INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
FT Trade Secrets
FT Free Lunch
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Daily roundup of headlines across the FT's different coverage areas.
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Daily roundup of headlines across the FT's different coverage areas.
Apricitas Economics
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A curious economics educator explains current events with common economics principles for an everyday audience.
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Great resources for current microeconomics topics and for educators interested in bringing economics examples to their classroom.​
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Weekly deep dive into the most pressing economics and finance stories of the weeks. Written with by a data-centric economist with easy to follow narratives.
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Downside: Some readers might find the dense format of the newsletter overwhelming, as it packs a substantial amount of info, data, and specifics.
ANALYSIS
Chartbook
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A newsletter on economics, geopolitics and history from Adam Tooze. More substantial than the twitter feed. More freewheeling than what you might read from me in FT, Foreign Policy, New Statesman.
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Downside: Interesting and often prescient in its analysis but lacks structure of covered topics which can make it a while card in a newsletter program.
About: These often coming from independent publishers on platforms like Substack. These niche newsletters will do deep dives into specific areas, often focusing on a single topic for extensive exploration.
These are great for gaining exposure to new ideas, impactful people’s analysis, and combinations between areas of focus that are not usually looked at together. When well chosen, good horizon expanders take you from being well informed to having interesting takes yourself
Weekly Global Economic Update
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Daily roundup of headlines across the FT's different coverage areas.
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Downside: Can be difficult to comprehend when read given the lack of context or content for any story
WEEKLY OVERVIEW
About: Aggregators Weekly overviews are newsletters that come either once or twice a week and do a combination of aggregation, synthesis, and analysis for you. For the busy professional this can be a great way to tie the news together or to catch up on the week if (and when) one’s days do not allow them to get to all of their newsletters.
TIPS AND TRICKS
Delete Regularly
Delete all newsletters by the end of the day and start over tomorrow, consistency is more useful than completeness. Clear all unread articles from the week on Saturday or Sunday to start fresh each week and not get overwhelmed.
Use Read Assist
For iPhone users, have your phone read newsletters out to you to keep disciplined and on track. Also accelerate your reading comprehension and speed by changing the settings. Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content < Speak Screen.
Read Consistently
Pick a fixed time every day to create a habit and prevent reading from taking up too much of the day. Adopting a news diet is hard, enforcing a structure around reading formalizes "reading news" into a program to track the topics that matter.
Start Broad
Subscribe to newsletters and whole news diets across a broad set of areas you find interesting. Its overwelming at first but treat the first weeks as a test period to find what you like and not, then whittle down to your core news diet.
Use the Unknown
Most adopters cant stick to their news diets because of insecurity and discomfort with unfamiliar terminology and concepts. This exposure is part of the value though, treat every every term, entity, and concept as an opportunity to learn.
Connect the Dots
Try to avoid news going one ear and out the other, try to connect stories to broader trends and to one another. Treating your reading as building a foundation of knowledge rather than a chore keeps it interesting and valuable.
