Financial News

I’ve used Yahoo Finance as my primary source for years.

It was fairly superficial and you had to tolerate a constant undercurrent of political bias but it was well organizing and freeee!

Over the last few months, they’ve increased their sponsored adds to articles ratio from ~25% to ~50% and they’re now comingling the two to bait you into reading the adds. Additionally, they’ve now drowned the site with so much video / graphical / hot-linked stuff that even my new laptop running on a fairly fast work connection takes about a minute to stabilize.

It’s clearly time to move on…should I just bite the bullet and subscribe to the WSJ or is there something like what Yahoo Finance used to be…not great but reasonable and freeee!

What say the hive.

I use Bloomberg or google finance.

The Onion

Bloomberg as well. Usually leave a minimized window up all day at work. So many of these sites have so much rolling content/gifs that it even jams up the brand new computer at the office. (definitely miss having a BBG terminal )

I just crack open my wallet and count how many moths fly out

If you have money invested with a broker do they have a website with info available to their clients?

I use various sites but for the serious unbiased info I use my brokers website. They have links to other sources besides their own.

Read the Drudge report, and the Huffington Post, and average.

Seriously I have no clue, it's impossible to get "news" anymore, just look at the newscaster cheerleaders during each convention, they don't even pretend to be honest anymore.

Scotttrade and FIdelity (and probably many others) have real news which focuses on just the stock price, but that doesn't sound what you're looking for.

jimbbski wrote: If you have money invested with a broker do they have a website with info available to their clients? I use various sites but for the serious unbiased info I use my brokers website. They have links to other sources besides their own.

I have accounts with three brokerage firms but rather than strict technical information “Spacely Sprockets has broken above its 200 day moving average” I’m more interested in current events from an investor-centric perspective “Kardashian’s TV special was a hit…let’s look at three leading silicone ETF’s”.

tuna55 wrote: Read the Drudge report, and the Huffington Post, and average. Seriously I have no clue, it's impossible to get "news" anymore, just look at the newscaster cheerleaders during each convention, they don't even pretend to be honest anymore. Scotttrade and FIdelity (and probably many others) have real news which focuses on just the stock price, but that doesn't sound what you're looking for.

I should have added earlier that I’d prefer something that’s publically available as I glean just as much, if not more, information from the reader comments section….you can quickly get a fairly accurate sense for which BS stories the public is buying and which they’re smart enough to see through.

I generally read Motley Fool and Quartz.

That said Quartz has a heavy leftist bias in most of its political and social articles. While I do read some of them, because my world view isn't shared by everyone, they get a little maniac sometimes. Overall though the quality is pretty good and they focus in on India as an emerging market a lot which is interesting to follow.

Edit: Hyperlinks attempted to take me to the site inside the GRM site. That was odd. Maybe I need to affix the http:// ? Edit 2: Yep that's it.

It doesn't matter. It's all BS anyway.

I was going to say no better than the regular news, but it's not even that good.

Buy the index on a planned schedule and ignore the news.

Ok I don't practice what I preach there; I do read a tiny bit of financial news but not in order to use it to guide investments at all.

On a side note my in laws just cashed their stocks in to wait for the crash coming around election time. They just retired. I was startled by this but then he said they jump back in when it is still low, it seemed less crazy. I guess losing a couple months of return for some sleep at night is an okay trade off.

Any opinions?

In reply to RossD:

If you do this every 4 years you might not qualify for 'long term capital gains tax's and be forced to pay significantly higher short term gains rate.

I have no idea if a crash around an election is predictable or not though.

RossD wrote: On a side note my in laws just cashed their stocks in to wait for the crash coming around election time. They just retired. I was startled by this but then he said they jump back in when it is still low, it seemed less crazy. I guess losing a couple months of return for some sleep at night is an okay trade off. Any opinions?

They just retired? I'd say good move. Stocks are as high as they've ever been. What's that old line? Buy low sell high? They're selling high. Pigs get greedy, hogs get slaughtered.

I just sold out to get money for a down payment on a house--without it the down payment I probably would have in another month or two anyways because it is my emergency fund and certain traits right now are making me nervous--the election being one of them. I'm not touching my retirement accounts though.

In reply to RossD:

Terrible move. Nobody can predict the market and presumably they just lost a big chunk on taxes if they had any gains. Which I doubt if they're making bad decisions like that very often.

Plenty of people sold out in 2008 and waited out the next few years losing out on a ton of gains.

The market has been at "record highs" through an enormous amount of history. Even buying at highs can result in great returns if you can resist the urge to try to beat the market. Chasing every last percent of return is what hurts investors the most.

I would say they - and everyone - should read the stock series here:

http://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/

In reply to RX Reven':

I hear ya. But my broker also has links to most any financial news on a stock and some that aren't. Plus I generally buy & hold my stocks, I.E. I'm not a stock trader. I'm more concerned about dividends and long term capital appreciation then a quick gain that a trader seeks.

dculberson wrote: In reply to RossD: Terrible move. Nobody can predict the market and presumably they just lost a big chunk on taxes if they had any gains. Which I doubt if they're making bad decisions like that very often. Plenty of people sold out in 2008 and waited out the next few years losing out on a ton of gains. The market has been at "record highs" through an enormous amount of history. Even buying at highs can result in great returns if you can resist the urge to try to beat the market. Chasing every last percent of return is what hurts investors the most. I would say they - and everyone - should read the stock series here: http://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/

But they've retired. They're cashing in--at this point they should mostly be in bonds anyways.

In reply to mtn:

That depends on their risk tolerance and asset allocation strategy, but from the information given it doesn't sound like staying in bonds is their intent - " they jump back in when it is still low." I will grant that I'm extrapolating a lot from very little info! :-)

In retirement I do not plan to go 100% bonds.

To all,

First, thank you for your posts and please feel free to take this thread into whatever financial discussions you’d like.

FWIW, I’m not a high frequency trader…I teach advanced statistics for a living, several of my friends are at the Ph.D. level, and none of us believe math can be used to outsmart the market…the slight insights that technical analysis (moving averages, support levels, etc.) provide are trivial compared to the “Black Swan” effect of game changers such as major technological advancements, geo-political events, etc..

I’m an old school investor…save until it hurts, invest at a consistent rate regardless of what the market is doing, avoid commissions and taxes like the plague, and never, never, never “Lift” (sell in fear).

I’m 52 and I’ve got nothing in bonds…94% is in equities (78% in S&P Index & ETF funds / 16% is in company stock and a few favorites like Amazon) and the remaining 6% is split between cash and precious metals.

I constantly get warning e-mails from my brokerage houses saying that I’m investing too aggressively for my age but what they don’t know (or perhaps care about) is that I’ve got 80% equity in my home and all of my other debt (one car loan and two credit cards) represents 33 days of my average daily net wealth accumulation over the last three years. In effect, I’m self-insuring by keeping my debt low so I can capture the benefits of investing fairly aggressively without being exposed to excessive risk.

I’m in strong agreement with dculberson’s comments above…many studies over the years have shown that people focus far more on loss than gain. In other words, they tend to think the world is coming to an end if they lose 10% in a market downturn but only shrug their shoulders if they miss out on a 10% gain in a market upturn…STAY FULLY VESTED AND NEVER, NEVER, NEVER LIFT.

Some will notice that I didn’t talk about diversification…it is important as math has an inherently negative quality…if you lose 50%, you need to gain 100% to get back to your starting point but if you gain 50%, you can only afford to lose 33% before being back at your starting point.

Unfortunately, we’re living in a grand experiment where the theory that humans have become so smart that they can override the natural tendency for markets to fluctuate is being tested. One casualty of this experiment is that we can’t both have an age appropriate diversified portfolio and receive a reasonable cumulative rate of return.

My solution has been to hit it with a BFH…live way below my means, build up a portfolio 2X+ what the consensus of financial advisors recommend so I won’t have to eat cat food in retirement if the market takes a big hit , and be balls out in equities no matter what happens.

dculberson wrote: ...The market has been at "record highs" through an enormous amount of history...

It always irritates me a bit when I hear this "all time hight" thing. A friend at work (CPA, well versed in economics etc.) would frequently talk about the market hitting an "all time high" like it was some sort of warning.

I would tell him: "Yes, that is what is supposed to do. On average, the market is at an all time high EVERY day!"

It's not like is supposed to be a flat line!! (general exceptions are shown above)

There has not been a single time in history that I have survived being as old as I am right now…death must be imminent.

Never lift or I'll wreck myself huh? So, investing in stocks is like driving a Porsche 911? Too scary for me!

RX Reven', do you have a newsletter? I'd like to subscribe.

As the voice of dissent though, there is a time when lifting is ok. It depends on everyones situation, but ask yourself, can you withstand a 20% drop? If not, you either are not ready for retirement, or if you are, you need to get at least partially out or differently diversified. My dad had a friend who was 10 years older than him. They'll be retiring at the same time because this friend was too heavily into stocks in 2008.

(I'm invested about 100% in stocks with my retirement accounts and will stay that way until I'm between 40-60. Non retirement is now going 100% to real estate, which will be about 20% of overall)

GameboyRMH wrote: Never lift or I'll wreck myself huh? So, investing in stocks is like driving a Porsche 911? Too scary for me!

It’s only scary for a while.

Eventually, you get to the point where even if you’re fully vested in equities and the market experiences a major selloff (20%<), you’re still way, way ahead of where you would have been had you maintained a conservative portfolio throughout your life.

So, you’re going to stuff a few 911’s into the wall but it’s OK, you’re also going to win so many races that you can easily afford the write off.

I was on the phone with a Schwab rep a few weeks ago…I bought 10K of Lucent (remember them, didn’t think so) years ago and after being acquired by Alcatel and stuff over the years, what’s left of the company is finally being taken off the market. My initial 10K investment wasn’t even worth enough to cover the sell commission ($29.95 Bhahaha) so I had a rep just retire the shares for me…essentially, I abandoned them in place.

I mentioned above that I hold Amazon…I won’t get into specifics but it has done so well for me that the Lucent loss is a rounding error. So, I stuffed my Lucent into a wall but I won Le Mans in my Amazon.

The goal is to be like Penske…”what, one of my cars went into a wall, that’s too bad, I hope my driver is OK, get started building more cars right away, can’t win races without cars you know”.