My Daily Financial Reads

In the process of learning about the financial system and educating myself about what happened during the financial crisis, I've gone through lots and lots of news sites and blogs. I've finally settled on some favorites, ones that I think give me reliable information and news and I thought I'd share them with you.

News

Bloomberg. Bloomberg has a great splash page with a bulleted list of the most recent financial headlines. It's site is clean and easy to navigate, unlike the new Wall Street Journal. While the WSJ still has some good news and reporting, the site is so encrusted with advertisements that it can be slow to load and annoying to read. No, I don't want to see a video advertisement for Apple load and start playing every time I visit your site, thank you very much. Bloomberg gives you the stories in a concise an useful way.

Broad Economic Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Analysis. This one is my favorite. If you go back in time and read Mish's columns from 2007, you can see that he called the crisis long ago. He's an economist from the Austrian school, meaning he believes in free enterprise and market forces. He is strongly against both the bailouts recommended by the Keynesians and the money printing recommended by the monetarists. He gives a great summary of the day's news and analyzes it well. The comment threads on Mish's site are inhabited by some very smart people. It's worth reading them as well.

Greg Mankiw. Greg is a monetarist and a Harvard economics professor. He has friends across academia and posts links to their pieces and provides cogent analysis of his own. Greg turned off his comments a while back because of an infestation of trolls.

Marginal Revolution. MR is run by a pair of economists who are from the Austrian school. They comment on the day's news and articles from economists who don't agree with them. Their site is a good way to get a pulse of the overall discussion. They're opinionated, but not strident.

Investment Advice

This set is not yet time-tested. It's my current group of daily reads. I learned the hard way earlier this year to follow my own thoughts and take the advice of others with a grain of salt. Right now, I'm really interested in the future of oil and metals and these sites give me a nice roundup of opinions and analysis.

I do not read any sites that deal with technical analysis of stocks where they apply wave theory to charts and graphs. I think that's utter nonsense. I'm trying to look at the world with as long a time frame as possible and am not interested in daily gyrations. I want to invest in companies that I would be happy to manage.

Jim Jubak. This is one of my financial guru's favorites. Jim provides both written and video segment analyses of the markets. He deals with the financial fundamentals of stocks and does so in a very accessible way. Watch this 5-minute segment on oil prices and you'll get the idea.

Seeking Alpha. Caveat emptor on this one. It's a hodgepodge of analysts and stock pickers. I only use it to get a read on what others are thinking. I haven't yet found anyone on this site I follow regularly.

Money Week. This is another caveat emptor site. These guys seem to be goldbugs which doesn't give me much faith in them. I haven't read them long enough to get a good sense of their track record. I like them because they hate debt and deficit spending.

There. That's my list. If you've got suggestions, I'd love to read them.

Update(s): Commenter John suggests the Financial Times. Thanks, John!