What are the 100 Top (Anglo-Saxon) Finance Blogs? A Pseudo-Scientific Study

I know what you're thinking: How on earth would I be able to read, let alone rank, 100 blogs? The answer is simple: I have a METHODOLOGY!... and it's about as scientific as a model used to work out the value of a junk-bond backed CLO. Yes, I've taken something completely subjective and added a spurious quantitative element to it. Given that this is standard practice in the financial industry, there should be no problem.

The Methodology

A category like 'financial blogs' is somewhat loose: I've included blogs that focus on analysis of financial news, blogs that waffle about trading and investment strategies, and more general economics blogs that provide analysis relevant to financial markets. Personal finance sites though, are excluded, so no Mint.com. The methodology is based on 3 voting rounds, during which points are scored. Let me explain...

Voting round 1: The List-Makers

As a starting point, I sought to identify four pre-existing 'best of' lists that appeared to be relatively reputable. There were actually surprisingly few of these, but I settled on the following four: 

• Time Magazine's list: The 25 Best Financial Blogs
• A list from John Carney of CNBC: The Best Alternative Financial Blogs
• Downtown Josh Brown's list: Who are the Five Best Financial Bloggers
• MarketWatch's Jon Friedman: Six Wall Street Blogs you should be reading

Each recommendation from these lists counted as a Round 1 Vote. I got 25 from Time, 6 from MarketWatch, 21 from CNBC (this list actually had 18 main suggestions, but mentions 3 others), and 13 from Downtown Josh Brown (his list has 5 major recommendations, but a series of secondary recommendations too). That gives us 55 initial votes from pundits who were prepared to put their reputation on the line.

Voting round 2: The winners of Round 1

I decided that if a blog received two votes or more from Round 1, that blogger was then eligible to vote too. How would they do that? Simple - I used their blogroll as a proxy: A blogroll is a list of blogs recommended by a blogger, an implicit vote of confidence if ever there was one.

The top blogs emerging from Round 1 were Business Insider (Joe Weisenthal), Calculated Risk (Bill McBride), Dealbreaker (Bess Levin), The Big Picture (Barry Ritholz), Pragmatic Capitalism (Cullen Roche), Felix Salmon, Zero Hedge, Abnormal Returns (Tadas Viskanta), FT Alphaville, Naked Capitalism (Yves Smith), Reformed Broker (Josh Brown), and Dealbook. Not all had blogrolls though, but I managed to find 282 blogroll votes from Naked Capitalism, Calculated Risk, The Big Picture, Zero Hedge and FT Alphaville.

Voting round 3: Up-and-comers from Round 2

I used a similar process for Round 3. This time, if a blog had received three or more votes of approval from Round 2 and and Round 1, their blogrolls were eligible to be drawn into the vote pool too. The Up-and-Comers included Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman, Econbrowser, Mish's Global Economic Analysis, Credit Writedowns, The Epicurean Dealmaker, Infectious Greed, The Aleph Blog, Minyanville, MarketBeat, Angry Bear, China Financial Markets, Jesse's Café Américain, Oil Price, The Economic Populist, Cassandra does Tokyo, Economist's View, Interfluidity, and Financial Armageddon. I rounded up the blogrolls of those that had them, and harvested another 1074 votes.

Weighting the Votes

To compile the final list, I weighted the votes. The votes from Round 1 were worth 4 points - because they were from explicit 'best of' lists that had been actively created. The votes from Round 2 were worth 2.5 points, because they were from more passive blogrolls, and the votes from Round 3 were worth 1.5 points. These points are somewhat arbitrary, but the results remain roughly similar even when I use slightly different point weightings. Besides, it's my list. So, here it is, split into four quartiles (please note that only the first quartile is ranked in exact order - thus, while Naked Capitalism is No.2, a blog in quartile 3 is somewhere between 50-75. I don't feel the need for spurious accuracy).

THE F-100

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Top24	Q2	Q3	Q4
Calculated Risk	Cassandra does Tokyo	TheMoneyIllusion	Daneric's Elliott Waves
Naked Capitalism	Financial Armageddon	The Research Puzzle	Dr. Housing Bubble
The Big Picture	Jesse's Cafe Americain	Macro-Man	Global Econ Matters
FT Alphaville	Oil Price	Macro Market Musings	Greg Mankiw
Felix Salmon	Minyanville	PeakProsperity	Liberty Str. Economics
Business Insider	WSJ MarketBeat	Streetwise Professor	Macroblog
Dealbreaker	Economix	The Burning Platform	Max Keiser
Abnormal Returns	Marginal Revolution	Tim Iacono	Modeled Behavior
Zero Hedge	Real Time Economics	The Oil Drum	Next New Deal
Econbrowser	Rortybomb	Megan McArdle	Psy-Fi Blog
Paul Krugman	Von Mises Institute	World Beta	re: The Auditors
Economist's View	The Economic Populist	Alea	The Market Ticker
Credit Writedowns	The Aleph Blog	A Dash of Insight	WSJ Deal Journal
Reformed Broker	Epicurean Dealmaker	Bespoke Investment	Distressed Debt Invest
Angry Bear	Credit Slips	Eschaton	Brazilian Bubble
Mish’s GlobalEcon	VoxEU	iMFdirect	Macrobusiness
Interfluidity	Falkenblog	Marc to Market	Money is the way
Brad DeLong	Ezra Klein	Market Montage	Automatic Earth
Dealbook	Freakonomics	Testosterone Pit	DollarCollapse
The Baseline Scenario	Beat the Press	AllAboutAlpha	Environmental Econ
China Financial Markets	Bronte Capital	Bonddad Blog	Pension Pulse
Infectious Greed	Roubini GlobalEcon	Boom Bust Blog	Q-Finance
Pragmatic Capitalism	Free Exchange	Capital Gains & Games	Robert Reich
Of Two Minds	Footnoted	Capital Spectator	Worthwhile Canadian
	Jeff Matthews	Coyote Blog	No.100: Your Choice!
	Market Folly

So, who is No. 100?
That's for you to decide. The list needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, because I've derived it from pre-existing opinions from respected, but comparatively mainstream commentators and their blogrolls. Not only have I assumed that their opinion is valid, but I've also assumed that there is no group-think or systematic bias from well-known bloggers reinforcing each other's positions with reciprocal links. Perhaps we should call the list the "Top 100 mainstream anglo-saxon finance bloggers who have already been discovered". It doesn't include all the cool smaller blogs that don't post as regularly, or who have weirder things to say. That said, I'm very pleased that the deranged rantings of Michael Fowke from Money is the Way got on - his blog is so surreal that many people don't get it, but it really captures something of the absurd hubris of financial institutions. I'd really like to see Ian Fraser's blog on there, and Tim Johnson's Magic, Maths & Money: Both of them got votes in Round 3, but not enough to get on the main list. I'll have to start work on another list of more marginal (and perhaps more subversive) bloggers - please send me any suggestions!

By the way, if you want some more good lists of financial blogs, check this huge list here, this one here, and this useful site here.

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