choosing financial and investing websites

On the financial side, in addition to the finance sections of the major portals i.e. Yahoo! Finance, MarketWatch was always a favorite and now that it is owned by Dow Jones (the publishers of The Wall Street Journal, which, of course is now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp which could change everything ... stay tuned) it seems to have better parentage, but unfortunately it seems to have more ads as well. SmartMoney was always a good alternative but now it too is in the Dow Jones stable and beginning to look alike.

CNBC.com, riding on the strength of its dominance of the cable TV market is a pretty strong competitor. Once again, as in general portals, Microsoft's MSN Money sort of trails the pack.

Yahoo! Finance MarketWatch

SmartMoney CNBC

AOL Daily Finance, takes a typical AOL approach with a more consumer friendly site. CNNMoney (which includes Fortune and Money magazine editorial) and Kiplinger are two sites that deserve serious attention. The other business pubs, Business Week (which is now Bloomberg Business Week), and The Wall Street Journal all are interesting reading, but it's hard to make a case for the Journal since it's basically a paid site, and why pay that much money to subscribe when most of the content is available for free on the news aggregator's.

Of course, some folks need to know who the “Masters of the Universe” are this week, so Forbes answers that desperate need.

AOL Daily Finance CNN Money

Kiplinger Bloomberg Business Week

Forbes Breitbart

Somewhat more sophisticated investors might prefer sites that are more devoted to pure investment information such as Bloombrg.com or Quote.com that features “Raging Bull,” a collection of financial message boards.

And, as if there were not already too many sites in this category, here comes Google with their new finance site.

Bloomberg Quote

Google Finance