A key to successful investing is having an informational edge over your competition of traders and investors. The best investment funds in the world employ teams of analysts from top tier schools to scour information sources daily to find that edge.
10-Q reports, 10-K filings, insider share purchases, board level changes, patent filings, hiring ex-employees as consultants… a never ending list of avenues are explored in the hopes of stumbling upon the necessary pieces of information that together form an investment thesis.
For casual traders and investors, the challenge is sourcing top class information. Unless you are willing to roll up your sleeves, and dig through SEC filings on your own, a way to accelerate your stock market research is by reading investment digests and analysis from top tier financial analysts, who often make their research public. But where do you find great top notch financial information and research?
A leading financial blog which puts everything in one place for you is Modest Money. As a top tier blog in its own right, Modest Money does an excellent job gathering information on other top finance blogs and ranking them based on quantitative criteria. The list isn’t an arbitrary ranking of financial blogs ordered by some random method, but instead it is scientifically organized using objective third-party verified information, including traffic, social media, and SEO scores.
The metrics used by Modest Money to rank its top finance blogs list is extensive. Included in the algorithm used to rank blog are the following metrics:
- Alexa Rank: Calculates the number of website visitors and scores sites based on traffic levels.
- SEMRush: Evaluates search engine ranks based on cost and volume of traffic if it were paid for with AdWords Pay Per Click Advertising.
- Social Metrics: Facebook Likes and Twitter Follows along with Klout scores.
- MozRank: Similar to Google’s PageRank and with a heavy emphasis on backlinks.
- Domain Authority: Predicts how well a website will perform on search engine rankings according to Moz.
- Page Authority: Evaluates how well a page is likely to rank in Google search results according to Moz.
The idea behind the Modest Money ranking list is to give equal weight to each of the three areas: traffic, SEO, and social activity. Total scores listed are an average of each blog’s scores in the primary categories. Then blog scores are compared to each other to create a full ranking list of top finance blogs.
A nice standout feature of the Modest Money top finance blogs list is that statistics are updated each Sunday, so the list is constantly populated with new up and coming blogs, such as Investormint, as well as, re-ordered when rankings change.
Admittedly, the popularity of a financial blog may not necessarily correlate to the quality of its content and investment analysis. However, a financial blog won’t sustain a high number of visits for very long if cannot engage its audience.
To win over readers, some blogs will focus on personal finances while others concentrate on technical analysis. Still others are dedicated to credit and borrowing, financial product and service reviews, getting out of debt, financial tools, options trading, futures trading, forex trading, bond investing, and even cryptocurrency investing.
The list is seemingly endless so while the ranking order is a great place to begin, you will need to select your financial blog based on your own preferences, risk profile, financial goals and time horizon. For example, retirees may prefer to concentrate on retirement-focused blogs while Millennials may find blogs about cryptocurrencies more appealing.
We found over 700 financial blogs listed on the Modest Money site so the selection of blogs is seriously impressive. If you are not sure where to begin to find great information, you won’t go wrong by exploring the list where you will discover some familiar names as well as lots of hidden gems, including:
- The Penny Hoarder
- Moneytips
- SmartAsset
- Everything Finance
- Lazy Man and Money
- My Wife Quit Her Job
- Yes, I Am Cheap
- CreditDonkey
- AffordAnything
Finally, Modest Money has a ton of great information spanning from credit and debt to career, and includes categories on investing, real estate, retirement, financial advice and even investing reviews. So, you may not need to look very far down the list to find some great content because amid stiff competition Modest Money ranks highly too.
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