Hey there,
Daily reading of FT, WSJ, Economist helps in building business acumen. However, business acumen takes time to build especially if you don't have formal training like an MBA program where you have been exposed to a lot of business case studies.
If you want to speed up the process, only read the headline and analyze why this might be happening before reading the article.
For example, lets take the FT article below.
"Kellogg’s to split into three separate food businesses"
You read the headline message and before reading the article identify 3 reasons what prompted Kellogg management to make this decision.
# 1: Kellogg might want to more optimally focus capital and resources on profitable and growing product categories and hive of rest of the product segments into a separate non-core business
#2: Kellogg's non-core businesses could become attractive to be acquired by a PE firm or a larger consumer goods company
#3: Positive market perception for a portfolio that is profitable and growing which could have a uptick in the stock price
Once you have listed the three reasons , go ahead and read the article and check if your initial hypothesis was accurate
Thanks
Ashwin