Super Sites for Online Investors

For Swinging Traders

If Austin Powers played the market, this might be his favorite method. Swing traders buy and hold stocks for shorter periods for time, namely weeks or months, trying to take advantage of intermediate market movements. Swing trading can put the "grr" in your growth stocks, but it's also riskier than long-term investing and it requires a lot of extra work.

In addition to a company's fundamentals, swing traders consider at least three other factors:

• News. When does the company announce earnings? When does the Federal Reserve meet next to decide on interest rates?
  
  
• Technical analysis. What sort of trend is a stock's price showing? How is the trading volume?
  
  
• Market sentiment. How do other investors feel about the stock? What's the "word on the street"?
  
  

News Sites

News is the lifeblood of the active trader. Even the best companies hit rough patches, so you need to keep up with the news affecting your holdings. Excellent news sites include:

• Briefing.com
  
  
• CNNfn
  
  
• CBS MarketWatch
  
  
• Quicken.com
  
  
• News Alert
  
  

Most investing sites offer news feeds from one or more of the above sites, as well as from Reuters, Business Wire, and AP. We also like Yahoo Finances Earnings Calendar because you can customize it to show only the headlines you want.

To keep up on interest rates and other government news, try EarningsWhispers.com which lists dates for important economic policy meetings, such as the Federal Reserve's Open Market meeting, where the Reserve chair and regional Reserve bank chiefs thrash out interest rates. Budding economics wonks will love this site, too. The similar StreetIQ is another good resource.

Quasi-News: Rumors and Whispers

Beneath the level of "official" news lies the murky realm of "whisper numbers." These unofficial earnings estimates have become a big part of the online investing scene. They sometimes prove more accurate than official numbers, possibly because they're based on fresher data. Analysts leak whisper numbers a few weeks before a company is due to report but long after they've calculated the official figures. Several sites offer whisper numbers:

• WhisperNumber.com
  
  
• BigCharts.com
  
  
• Thomson Investor's Network
  
  

Take care to distinguish between the opinions gathered from actual Wall Street leaks and the opinions of investors just visiting the site. Some of these sites, such as WhisperNumber.com, invite your recommendations and add them to a chart.

Technical Analysis

Technical analysis is the creation and interpretation of stock charts to predict price movements. Experts sharply disagree on its value, calling it everything from serious science to astrology. We offer no judgment, but we can point you to some of the most useful free charting tools.

We're partial to MSN MoneyCentral Investor's StockCharts.com Like most free charts, it plots both prices and volume curves and lets you customize the time period. But it also places tags on the chart noting when (and by what ratio) a stock was split, as well as when the company issued dividends and their amount. The charting app also provides lots of analysis tools, such as moving averages, Moving Average Convergence Divergence (better known as MACD) lines, and money flow.

Other good charting sites include:

• The Motley Fool
  
  
• Silicon Investor
  
  
• Raging Bull
  
  

Market Sentiment

News, numbers, charts are only part of the game. Investor sentiment or mood also matters, and message boards are a popular way to gather it. Many large investment sites offer separate boards for each stock symbol.

As with technical analysis, experts hotly debate the value of message boards. TheStreet.com's Herb Greenberg told us "investors should avoid message boards like the plague" because of the rampant disinformation there. MoneyCentral's Risa Kaplan and Jon Markman are more sanguine, saying message boards are great places to learn and swap ideas.

If you want to use message boards, you should do three things: Verify, verify, verify. Double- and triple-check information by going to several sources, including the company's own Web site. (It's surprising how seldom investors think to go to company sites, yet these sites are often the most accurate.)

The following four sites offer the best message boards:

• Yahoo Message Boards
  
  
• TheLion.com,
  
  
• Money.net
  
  
• Datek;
  
  

The Motley Fool and Silicon Investor are our favorites. Many of the postings are intelligent and well reasoned, and both sites are especially vigilant about checking for spam and dumping offending posts. We like The Fool a little better than Silicon Investor because you can both lurk and post there for free; Silicon Investor charges $120 per year for posting privileges. The Fool's boards are also easier to navigate. You can jump from one message to the next with a single keystroke and search for favorite-author posts within specific boards.

The Yahoo and Raging Bull boards offer up too much spam for our tastes. Yahoo edges out Raging Bull because of the sheer volume of postings--open enough oysters and you'll find pearls.

Want an easy way to keep up with boards on all four sites? Enter a stock symbol at MyTrack and it will bring the latest message subject lines from all boards to one page. This is a huge time saver when you're trying to keep up with a popular stock in a fast-moving market. Our main beef: TheLion.com doesn't let you follow message threads.