Financial Advice / Investment Community sites, forums etc

March 4, 2005 7:08 AM

I am looking for good, active websites for financial advice, tips...community run unbiased sites where members are free to post their views would be good. I did a search and cannot find anything interesting. I am already aware of fool.com. Any others?
posted by ataraxian to Work & Money (8 answers total)

I find bankrate.com useful. Although they don't have a discussion board.
posted by grouse at 7:11 AM on March 4, 2005

I have a good friend who says the people over at MSN Money's message boards are good people. He was a member for many years. I can't speak for the content on the site, but he had me post a message to the message board about a really shady investment someone I know had made. I received many, many very knowledgeable replies. Some were even going around tracking specific information for me, a first time poster.
posted by ontic at 8:21 AM on March 4, 2005

I think you will have a hard time finding a forum where you can trust anyone. Ulterior motives abound on the intarweb.

That being said, I subscribe to the print version of The Financial Times to get a handle on what is going on in the world and how it relates to finance. They also have some free online content.

The reason this paper is so useful to me is it doesn't have all the bias, Wall Street tunnel vision, and rose colored glasses that can pervade US media. It looks at everything from the perspective of what does it all mean in regards to global finance, and it pulls no punches politically.

I find this useful, and tips useless, as I need to understand why something will go up or down. Without a "why" you end up buying stocks at the height of the internet technology bubble as all the tips and advice pretty much said the sky is the limit when stocks were trading at values that were obviously inflated far above their real worth.
posted by jester69 at 8:36 AM on March 4, 2005

With respect, I suggest that you're looking for no such thing. Rather you're looking for an independent financial adviser. At the very least you're buying someone to sue if it all goes horribly wrong.
posted by dmt at 10:26 AM on March 4, 2005

i also don't believe such a site / forum / community exist in 2005, they all got astroturf'ed
posted by selfsck at 11:52 AM on March 4, 2005

This web site is more of a personal diary, but I've found myself reading it day after day for the past several years because it's so genuine and insightful. The author is a retired IT publishing exec who cashed out of the biz at the best possible time. He now writes about his financial pursuits and mis-pursuits only because it keeps him honest and active. From what I can tell, he's only profiting by Google ads.
posted by tfmm at 12:22 PM on March 4, 2005

Uhh, how about ask.mefi. I haven't found anything better. Most places are just filled with day traders trying to manipulate the stock so you cannot trust anything there.
posted by pwb503 at 1:04 PM on March 4, 2005

The forums at morningstar.com are good, especially the "Vanguard Diehards," even if you're not a Vanguard mutual fund owner.
posted by Lizzle at 8:41 PM on March 16, 2005