That Sound You Hear is the Financial Blogosphere

Traders and investors consume news, intelligence and insight the way truckers consume diesel fuel. So, what are the blogs you should read to be a well-informed citizen of Wall Street?

Thursday's Wall Street Journal offers up a thumbnail list of 10 favorite financial blogs chosen by David Weidner, best known as a columnist for Dow Jones MarketWatch. It intentionally omits major news sites' own blogs, such as the more than a dozen maintained by various WSJ reporters. Weidner's 10 entries run the gamut from in-your-face, gossipy venues to semi-scholarly economic analysis from the likes of Calculated Risk and Naked Capitalism.

Rather than the "must-read" claim in his article's subtitle, the list strikes me as a mixed bag. Alongside the parody-oriented and not-safe-for-work DealBreaker, Henry Blodget's hyperventilating perma-bearish BusinessInsider/ClusterStock, and the conspiracy-themed GS666 (perhaps the first dedicated bash-Goldman site), it showcases some serious but less influential blogs, i.e., Macro Man and The Reformed Broker. Meanwhile, several finance blogs I see regularly quoted by other well-read, respected pundits - Baseline Scenario, Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed, Economics of Contempt, Mish (Mike Shedlock), Stone Street Advisors (whose marquee author is the ubiquitous but anonymous "Anal_yst") - aren't represented.

To be sure, rating blogs is mostly a matter of personal taste. But if you're an investment professional or business student relying on the Internet to stay current and help shape your thinking, you'd be unwise to treat the WSJ list - or any one list - as authoritative.