Ask HN: Understanding Financial Markets

Dear HN-Crowd, reading about news considering the financial market, I sometimes wonder how many people truly understand what is happening actually. Hacker-mindedly I of course am looking for shortcuts -- if such exist at all. However, I would also accept a longer track, if this will stop making me feel so insanely dumb, when I try to incorporate that tiny bit of news into my model of the financial world. To some degree, I understand what is going on. But I can usually not say, what the implications are in the way I can do that for political news, the weather or the systems (physical and numerical models/code) I am working with on daily basis. And from my point of view, I wouldn't dare to say that these are less complex. So if you know a good source, thank you in advance.