Things Investors Should Read. Things Investors Should Avoid.

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This is Warren Buffett's office at Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B  ) headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.

The portrait behind Buffett's right arm is his father. The file bin at the end of the desk reads "TOO HARD." There are some magazines, a pile of newspapers, and a phone.

But notice what you don't see. There are no stock tickers. No Bloomberg terminals. No charting software. No Twitter feeds. No pundits spouting forecasts. No computer monitors, and maybe not even a calculator. Buffett has created more than a quarter-trillion dollars of value for Berkshire shareholders from this desk over the last 50 years. And he did it while rejecting most of the "tools" investors utilize. We can all learn something from that.

We have more information than ever before. Are we better investors because of it? I don't know of any evidence that we are. In her book Bull!, Maggie Mahar writes: "The problem is that much of the information that investors want — and think they need — is just that, 'information,' not knowledge."

Good investors read a tremendous amount of information, of course. They're just more selective with what they read and pay attention to.

Here are few ways to become more selective.

Avoid explanations of random events. Pay more attention to historical context.
People can't stand the idea that events are random and unexplainable, so they try to attach meaning. You'll see things like, "Stocks fall 0.5% as investors react to manufacturing data" rather than the more honest, "Stocks fall 0.5% because they just do that sometimes."