What Sites Does A Geek Look at To Learn About the Market?

August 21, 2009

It’s difficult to keep up with everything going on in today’s marketplace. I personally tend to look at three kinds of sites: current investing news, background sites, and aggregators. Here’s a few of the places at which I look most days to keep an eye on what’s going on in the marketplace, and to gain more of an understanding of it.

Current Investing News Sites

Of course, one can’t begin to understand the market in general without understanding the specifics. I try to look at investing news sites that can give me real-time quotes and a variety of news about what’s going on in the markets.

Yahoo! Finance - This is my default site for checking out stock prices. They have real-time quotes for free (so I don’t have to login to my brokerage account). They also have some good columnists as well, and the message boards are always great for a laugh.

MSN MoneyCentral -This usually has some interesting news stories. I especially recommend following Jim Jubak (for stock picks), Bill Fleckenstein (his Contrarian Chronicles are basically consistently gloomy, but a good counterbalance to the talking heads), and Jon Markman (who seems to understand the technical side of investing, something in which I have only a passing interest).

Google Finance - I’m actually not as impressed with this as I thought I would be. However, they do have some nice charts.

CNN Money - They occasionally have some interesting articles, but in general I tend to prefer Yahoo Finance.

Wall Street Journal - Probably the best place for investing news, bar none. The iPhone app is also pretty decent.

Seeking Alpha - One of the best investing “commentary” sites out there.

Zero Hedge - Rather technical and for the conspiracy-minded, but it gives you a good insight into the minds of the market makers and others of that stripe.

Background Sites

This consists of sites that contain news that isn’t directly related to investing, or investing advice that isn’t related to current news.

The Economist - Despite its title being awfully monetary-sounding, this is just the best bet for getting world news. A subscription to the print edition is about the only time I would recommend buying a magazine subscription.

Investopedia - If you don’t know your CAPM from ROIC, then you can always look it up here.

Investing News Aggregator Sites

This category includes social-networking sites with information relevant to investors’ interest.

Economics Reddit - Interesting news related to the economy, upvoted or downvoted depending on interest (if you don’t understand how social news sites work yet).

Business Reddit - Same as above, except focused more on individual businesses.

FeedTheBull - Social news site devoted only to economics and investing stories.

Sites I Used To Like

The Motley Fool - Oh, Fool, what hast thou become? This used to be a really excellent site, with interesting market news and a passive indexing philosophy. Now every article is just shilling for one of their over-priced “premium” services, including - I kid you not - an actively managed fund. I occasionally check it out, but the signal-to-noise ratio is just too low.

TheStreet.com - This site also had some interesting things a ways back, but it is too choked with advertising and not enough in-depth analysis.

Any other sites of interest?

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