Too many gyanis, not enough gyan

There's this funny T-shirt slogan in Hindi, which supposedly started as a notice in some college canteen, "Yaha par gyan na baante, yaha sab gyani hai." Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in investing. Over decades of thinking, talking and listening about investing, I'm still continually amazed by the sheer amount of conversation that revolves around esoteric economic factors that the investor should actually not pay any attention to. Every day, analysts, economists, investment managers and other sundry talking heads appear on TV channels and newspapers and now social media, talk endlessly about interest rates, the fiscal situation, inflation rates, demographic shifts, oil prices, trade flows, quantitative easing or tightening and a lot more in the same vein.