Top 10 Investment Forums

Conversations you can profit from

Since the advent of the Internet, investment forums have become an excellent place for investors to discuss their favorite stocks. If you’re not sure about a specific offering, go to the message boards to see what others think about the company.

Don’t use these discussions as a confirmation of your opinion but rather as another viewpoint that can assist you in your decision making. Forums are meant to help you think about what you’re doing, not make the decision for you. In the end, only you can do that.

Message boards and investment forums come and go. Here are 10 that have been around for a while:

• Yahoo Finance: A large board on the Internet. This is the first place to go when looking for stock talk.
• The Motley Fool: This one is also very popular. This site also provides a lot of commentary on stocks, mutual funds, etc.
• CBS Marketwatch: This is by Dow Jones, the same people responsible for the Wall Street Journal.
• Board Central: This site aggregates messages from several sites.
• MSN Money: This is Microsoft’s message board for money.
• Silicon Investor: This is an investment forum started during the dot-com bubble focused on technology stocks.
• Investors Hub: Run by the same people who run Silicon Investor.
• Investors Village: Started in 2003, it’s a relative newcomer but does a good job. It’s worth taking a look.
• Free Real Time: In addition to the message boards, they provide a lot of market commentary you might find interesting.
• The Lion: This is a message board aggregator.

Use message boards and investment forums to develop investment ideas. It’s not easy finding great stocks, so the more unconventional and off the beaten path the better. The point of the exercise is to stay informed and ahead of the curve.

Web communities are one of the fastest growing parts of the Internet. Sites that are able to bring like-minded people together in one spot to discuss all that they are passionate about generate incredible loyalty among their users. When you go to the Yahoo Finance message boards you know you are going to get some really passionate investors (both long and short) making their opinions known. It’s all good. Sure, the site might have users paid to promote certain stocks but that just makes the conversation more interesting. Since we know they’re being paid, their have to argue even more convincingly before we’ll invest. Not many paid promoters are able to do so.