So, would you mind saying how you manage to keep in touch with the world?

Intermittently!

Continuously watching company and economic news simply isn't possible - there's always something going on somewhere in the world and you've got to sleep sometimes! And life is too short IMHO to be watching it even as close to continuously as reasonably practicable - not unless you actively enjoy doing that, which I don't.

Furthermore, I know I cannot compete with the big financial institutions at the game of watching company and economic news and responding to it quickly - they can watch far more than me, far more continuously. One of the maxims of the Japanese game of Go is "Attack from strength, not weakness" and it applies to many other games as well, including this one... As a private investor, my strengths are being able to tune my investment strategy precisely to my investment aims, not having to keep other people happy, etc, not quick-response trading in reaction to news.

So I don't regard being fully up to date on the news as a priority. I usually take a look at the newspaper headlines each day and read any stories that catch my attention, which means I'll probably be up to date on major company and economic news - but that isn't the primary aim of doing that reading, which is to know what people are talking about in social situations. And it does happen from time that as a result of concentrating on one particular thing I'm doing, I end up skipping a few days of even that type of news reading...

I do however do concentrated, focussed bursts of news reading about the company or companies concerned whenever I have an investment decision to make, and those bursts do usually include quite a bit of catching up on past news.

Gengulphus