The 20 Most influential finance blogs
“Most investors would acknowledge that social media is playing an increasing role in their investment decisions,” observes the UK Web site Mindful Money. “Yet no-one has mapped the emerging network of influence likely to be playing a crucial part in those decisions.” Until now.
The presentation below provides a fascinating map of financial media influencers. The MindfulMoney top 20 should come as no surprise. You probably visit them daily, or at least discuss ideas they have unearthed long before the mainstream media stumbles onto them.
Here are the top 20, with links, followed by the presentation. Congratulations to all listed:
1. Naked Capitalism
2. Infectious Greed
3. The Big Picture
4. Jesse’s Cross Roads Cafe
5. Zerohedge
6. Mish’s global Economic Analysis
7. Calculated Risk
8. Paul Krugman’s Blog
9. FT Alphaville
10. Ludwig von Mises Institute
11. The Market Trader
12. WSJ Blogs
13. The Epicurean Dealmaker
14.Credit Writedowns
15. Dealbreaker
16. China Financial Markets
17. Max Keiser
18. The Angry Bear
19. The Economist
20. Jr. Deputy Accountant
There are several thoughts that occur to me regarding this list,
but the first is that readers and those who comment make a difference…people bring information and insights that go far beyond slogans of the moment or passions of the day, although those are are part of the deal. This is true for each blog but also from my experience readers usually have at least several blogs on their lists, and often are not organized simply by political economic approach as the first criterion. One can read NC or Economist’s View as well as Mish.
These blogs are data driven in various ways and often contain many links that allow easy access to data, original materials, or documents so people may check accuracy of the post. In looking for new writers for AB this is one criterion that is mandatory overall, and even decent writers of blogs with strong opinions often omit links to such data or docs, which is unsatisfactory but average for writing. The extra care for targeted audiences pays off.
Most are dominated or driven by a person with a strong presentation style and implied forceful personality who spends a lot of time gathering information and is part of the industry. Angry Bear is a multi-authored blog that has more of a magazine format than most.
Another recent list ranked 20 top financial blogs includes AB and is based on pageviews, but the notion they added appears to have a definition of finance that includes advice to investors.
Anyway, our readers and commenters deserve the credit in addition to the contributors. Thanks all. Dan
Dan
grumble from this bear, angrier than most:
first, i suppose the “influential” refers to your more economically sophisticated posters, so I should not expect that description to apply to me, nevertheless
Andy Biggs was bragging today how the Payroll tax holiday shows that the claim that Social Security is self supporting is not true. Of course it WAS self supporting until he and his friends had a brilliant idea about how to destroy it by giving the people back their retirement savings to spend at Wal Mart.
I like to think it was my pointing out, constantly, the importance of “SS pays for itself,” that showed the Biggs – Peterson folk the fatal flaw in their argument that SS was going to destroy the country with huge unfunded deficits. Since their object was never the money in the trust fund, but the destruction of the workers’ means to save their own money for their own retirement security, the payroll tax holiday was perfect for their purposes. Now that’s influential.
Meanwhile, we have a few regular commenters who add nothing to the discussion but obfuscation. Long and repeated comments chasing down some bogus or arcane use of some word… that changes not a damn thing about the facts as they affect real people… but do a good job, i imagine, of distracting those real people from understanding the essential nature of the theft of their retirement that is taking place as we speak. I guess that’s influential, too.
For those who love links, here is where I heard about Biggs’ brag.
http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-retirement/article/111849/social-security-changes-in-2011?mod=fidelity-readytoretire&cat=fidelity_2010_getting_ready_to_retire
Influence takes advertizing, money, and organization. To date that has gone to the people who lie for a living…there is no excuse for willfull misrepresentation on these people’s part. There is a conference today by Latino organizations on SS in particular, and a growing list of organization coming on board to strengthen social security.
AB has been one of the few keeping this agenda out in the open. There is a growing movement to head off ‘fixing’ a SS program that needs no immediate fix and only a minor one at that later. The agenda is clear, and it is not the deficit hawk agenda at all as advertised. This will become clear over time.
Yes we are a small, amateur blog which has no budget to speak of. And everyday new links are being connected to AB to the business and news world by people who have budgets…go figure.
Rdan,
Congrats on you success! Of the ones list I only check out Naked Capitalism, CR, and Mish. AB is the only one I comment on.
Dan–Thanks for AB and thanks to everyone here. I am a “naive listener” for every subject but SS. So, I can and have learned a lot about what is going on in the minds of the Villagers and those who prey on them. They really should take more care out there in the deep, dark financial woods surrounging Washington. But, alas, they don’t read AB! If they did, they’d easily be able to tell the difference between Granny and a Wolf in poke bonnet! Poor souls. Oh, well….uh, uh, huh. Another one bites the dust. NancyO
Zerohedge? Mises? Maybe we really are doomed.
Dan,
What’s wrong with me? Of the twenty listed blogs I only stop at and read AB. I do read Krugman’s column in the Times, but only because its the only “liberal” commentary that paper publishes. I think that the strength of AB rests in the fact that it does not get hundreds of comments after each post. There is such a thing as too much information. We could use some more original reactionary commenters though. Our usual right wingers are beginning to sound like a taped loop, what we used to refer to as a “broken record.”
Jacobins United For a Better America
Well I find it interesting that AB is apparently a stopping point for finance people to start with, still less that we end up in the top 20. Maybe I just have selective blindness but I just don’t recall a lot of pieces that would guide anyone on a buy/sell decision on any given day. But then maybe that is true of most of the blogs on the list, because I am pretty much in Jack’s position, I don’t have to specifically visit Yves or Krugman because odds are I will get linked back to them from the other blogs I frequent and so don’t need to make a special stop.
The only thing I can figure off the top of my head is that traders are flooded with stock picking newsletters off and on line all the time and know that everyone else is reading the same stuff with the result that they are all going outside the actual finance world to get an edge and not quite getting that they all end up landing on the same places anyway. “Ha ha! Who ELSE would think of monitoring Angry Bear AND Mises.org both ! Bwa, ha, ha”. Only to find out the answer is actually “Well, everybody”.
I am only vaguely familiar with about half of the blogs on the list but between the ones I know and the titles of the others it seems that traders per se must be too busy to search out blogs but that analysts are always trying to gain an edge.
In any case i can’t imagine that anyone in the finance world is tuning in on my little corner of the blogosphere, so congrats to those Bears that are actually drawing these particular eyeballs.
Bruce,
I can’t imagine that anyone in the finance world is tuning in on my little corner of the blogosphere,
Actually, your presentation of Social Security is very persuasive. More importantly it is very unique, and so draws a lot of eyeballs. Persuasive + Eyeballs = Influence.
Thanks for that Sammy.
But what I meant is that I can’t think of anything I ever wrote that would help someone time the market or even make decisions on longer term investments.
Bruce,
You are selling yourself short. Yes, nothing on AB is going to influence which stock to buy in the next hour (or sell). That’s not the point. AB provides some very good presentations, SS being the most visible but there are others, that bring a different perspective to mid-to-long term investment strategies. People may not agree with you on any one thing but your ideas may get the ball rolling when combined with all the rest of the information they are absorbing. A lot of the ‘standard’ financial fare is all the same, even from the eyes of professionals (just paraphrased my brother-in-law, who is a pro).
And you provide a different perspective and at times have looked at things no one else thought of interesting enough to bring up. Just like some of the other ‘off-beat’ blogs listed. You never know where that well-spring of insperation will come from.
So this did not surprise me in the least. Now if we could get a little less of the looney progressive left who sound like broken records these days, maybe you could move up in the rankings!
🙂
Islam will change
Rdan, Bruce Webb, and Coberly,
I wanted to let you all know that links to AB feature prominently and often in my letters to Presidents and Congress people as well as in my posted comments elsewhere and in my emails to friends and acquaintances who show signs of wavering on Social Security.
I’m thankful there’s a place where a clear explanation and clear analysis of news remains available. And thanks, too, for your willingness to answer the same questions and respond to the same objections/arguments over and over again. Every mind that opens up to the history of SS, and the truth behind the news, will lead to more understanding in the populace.
Congrats to all! As you gain in influence, we all gain.
thanks for this list. What do you think is the best site? I prefer reading blogs or aticles that are dont sound like I am reading the news but more on the point of view of the person.
Good post. I share all of these same
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