Financial Blog Roundup

Three Rules of Blogs

1. Know your source – verify it with your own logic or a main stream media source
2. Avoid Yes Men Blogging – don’t restrict yourself to those blogs you agree with or you’ll wind up with the equivalent of just “yes men” blogs
3. Read the Comments – just do it and you’ll understand why

1. Seeking Alpha – This is a good general purpose stock research blog that allows you to search by ticker and includes both technical and fundamental opinions on stocks. The articles are from various sources who, for the most part, provide bios that allow you to judge their opinions.
2. The Big Picture – This self described “Macro Perspective on Capital Markets, Economy, Geopolitics, Technology and Digital Media” is from Wall Street vet Barry Ritholtz. It is somewhat of a contrarian site but the comments are choc full of mostly intelligent disagreement that lets you see both sides of a given argument.
3. Calculated Risk – primarily a Real Estate blog but good for breaking down economic numbers/ The comment section is populated by some great opinions as well
4. Jim Sinclair’s “Mine Set” – This is a major gold bug site that makes sense once you understand the Formula that underpins the authors claim to $1650 gold. Also a good collection point for news not in the news. Contains analysis based on both fundamentals and technical trading for gold and gold stocks
5. Naked Capitalism – a great collection blog that pulls marco market info from around the globe. Similar to Calculated Risk in that some of the best info on the site is found in the comments.

This list is just the Top 5 sites that I use. I started the list with Seeking Alpha because it actually led me to the other five sites. All of these sites frequently contain terms or events that I am unfamiliar with so both Google and Wikipedia are indispensable.

The following example applies both to how to be a successful trade and how to use blogs:

I check the blog Trader Mike infrequently due to it brief entries and focus on technical trading. Yet just yesterday I checked it for the first time in a few weeks and found the following link: One Way to Learn to Trade . This took me to another blog, Globetrader, that has my exact philosophy for successful trading (in that there is no exact method). Here is “GlobeTraders” advice:

What do you need to do to become a profitable trader?

“There is no holy grail, there is no secret trading wisdom. It’s all very plain and simple. But you need to find it in yourself. That might sound cryptic, but trading the way I understand it is nothing mechanical, nothing I can reproduce in an automatic trading system. And that means if you want to learn it you will have to invest the time. You can shorten your way by following a path that has lead to success for others. If it is your path only the future will tell. There are a lot of successful trading methods I can’t trade, because I don’t have the money or account size, because emotionally I can’t stand the high number of losers compared to a small but very profitable number of winners.

I followed a master trader, I learned a lot from her and I got my account to new highs only to go nearly bankrupt just 6 months later. The way that true master trader traded, even if it was extremely successful, was not my way. I could not trade that way and it nearly cost me my account to finally understand that. It took another 2 years to find my way, to find a way to trade that is in sync with my understanding of the markets. You will find successful traders on your way as well. You will follow their example and try to emulate their trading. But only if you are able to make it truly your own, will you be successful. “