It is often said that the first step to becoming the best trader is a simple one -- switch off the TV.

Top financial channel -- as well as its competitors -- will only cause you to dumber and poorer.

This arrives as a shock to a lot of people. After all, financial channels offer a steady stream of well-credentialed experts, people with amazing titles from prestigious firms. Nearly everyone hold PhDs, years of experience, or manage large sums of funds. They appear good. They look sharp. They have insightful opinions plus reams of arcane investment data tripping off their tongues.

How can listening to them perhaps make you a poorer trader?

Because the unstated premise behind these shows -- which exist, of course, to sell advertising -- is that people is required to be in a near-constant position of response:

"The market is hitting a new high today. What must investors perform at present?"

"The Fed has left rates of interest unchanged. What must traders do at this time?

"GNP was up an unexpectedly strong 3.8 percent last quarter. What should traders perform at the moment?"

They bring on an analyst with a bullish view and another with a bearish one -- on stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, rates of interest, or the financial system -- allow them to square off for a few minutes, after that cut to commercials. After sometime later, they come back and perform it some more. This goes on day after day, week after week, year after year.

Why do so many bright, talented, educated people spend many hours staring blankly in the tube?

The small answer, certainly, is we like it.

But do we, really? Is watching TV more fulfilling than what you'd be doing if you were not?

If you receive particular about it, you might feel a little ridiculous. As an example, have you ever told yourself something like:

If he replies that you're still being subjected to several hours of commercials each week, you inform him you tape the shows and fast-forward through them.

If he counters that taping just allows you to consume more TV, you can actually all the time play your trump card: "Mind your own business."

After all, you're an grownup. It's your life to survive. You can spend it any style you want.

But, between South Park and Grey's Anatomy, would you ever reflect on how you're spending it?

No matter how fine the programming is -- and let's face it, several of it is superb -- or how rapidly you fast-forward from your commercials, the time you spend in front of the tube is time you haven't spent pursuing your objectives, living out your goals, or just interacting with another human being. If you're aged and companionless -- or housebound for another reason -- that is different. Except that doesn't describe the majority of us.

Twenty-five years ago, Neil Postman warned of our consuming love affair with TV in Amusing Ourselves to Death. From the book -- a jeremiad about the danger of turning serious conversations about politics, business, religion, and science into entertainment packages -- he argues that TV is generating not the dystopia of George Orwell's 1984 but rather of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World:

"Religious devastation is more likely to come from an enemy having a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not observe us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There isn't any need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a people gets distracted by trivia, while cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation turns into a type of baby-talk, when, briefly, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk."

He concludes that we'd all be improved off if television got worse, not better.

According to A.C. Nielsen, 99 percent of American households have a TV set. Two-thirds have more than 3. These sets are on an around of 6 hours and 47 minutes per day.

49 percentage of Americans polled say they spend a lot time in front of the Television. It isn't difficult to view why. The common viewer watches on average four hours of Television each day. That's two months of non-stop TV-watching per year. In a 65-year life, a person could have spent 9 years glued towards the tube.