You may have heard of Joe Granville. Joe was a larger-than-life character in the investment world.

Joe was a showman.

He'd start his speaking engagements by springing out of a coffin or by wearing an Elvis costume. Once, he stunned an audience at a Phoenix, Arizona, hotel by walking across the surface of the hotel's swimming pool.

(In reality, Granville had the hotel staff rig a plank for him to walk on just below the surface of the water.)

But Granville's biggest feats were his market calls

Despite all the flair, he was, in reality, a serious market analyst who created some original technical indicators that are still used to this day. Studies done since Granville retired his market letter showed that his early market calls to predict the Dow Jones Industrial Average actually beat the market by a statistically meaningful margin over the decades.

Because of that accuracy, investors far and wide hung onto his words.

At his peak, Granville was attributed with actually causing major market moves in the Dow as readers flocked to follow his advice

On Monday, April 21, 1980, for instance, Granville shifted his market call from 100% bearish to 100% bullish it was such big news at the time it landed him on the cover of The New York Times.

When the market opened, it gapped up more than 4%, a move so large that trading was suspended.

That influence got Joe audiences with presidents, CEOs and the media.

But I'm not here to talk about Granville's larger-than-life personality or his boisterous market calls

You see, old Joe still has an important lesson to teach us today. And it all comes down to his TV.

Later in life, Joe moved to Arizona, where he continued analyzing the markets daily. There was just one problem where to find live stock quotes to use in his work. While the internet had emerged as a valuable tool to deliver real-time market data, Joe wouldn't have it. You see, Joe was worried that the government was watching him, so he refused to use a computer.

(Given the number of U.S. presidents Granville had met over his lifetime, maybe he was on to something.)

So instead, he bought a big-screen television, installed it in his home office and tuned it to CNBC. But Joe's TV wasn't like most others he kept it permanently on mute and draped a large blanket over the top of it so that only the bottom few inches were showing

Granville wanted the scrolling stock quotes at the bottom of the screen, without subjecting himself to the financial news noise that would affect his trading!

Joe Granville isn't the only prominent investor who treats the financial news like poison another famous investor I know likes to joke that he doesn't own a TV because, "it's too expensive."

By that, he means that the risks of having his trading impacted by the "news noise" isn't worth the entertainment value.

2020 is noisy. Between the COVID-19 crisis, the ongoing election drama and constant hand-wringing about the economy, its hard to make sense of what might impact the market and whats just a distraction.

Right now, what you need to know to profit as a tech investor today is pretty simple: The stock market is in a clear uptrend, the tech sector is leading the pack and the things that are actually driving prices higher arent changing anytime soon.

The noise is on full blast. So just turn it off.

Sincerely,

Jonas Elmerraji, CMT