Content Matters

Someone has created the Interview Sarah Palin site which leverages a statistical Markov model to auto-generate responses to questions that might be posed to Sarah Palin in the debate.

So, which of the following is the computer-generated response, which is the real Sarah Palin and which is the Tina Fey version?

1. Q: What's your opinion of this potential 700 billion dollar bailout?
A: Like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this. We're saying, 'Hey, why bail out Fanny and Freddie and not me?' But ultimately what the bailout does is, help those that are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy to help...uh...it's gotta be all about job creation, too. Also, too, shoring up our economy and putting Fannie and Freddy back on the right track and so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending...'cause Barack Obama, y'know...has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans, also, having a dollar value meal at restaurants. That's gonna help. But one in five jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation. That, you know...

2. Q: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign-policy credentials.
A: Well, it certainly does, because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there… We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.

3.Q: What is your foreign policy experience?
A: I want you to not lose sight of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I am the executive of. And there in Russia Diplomacy is about reform of government and these regulatory agencies back on the world. I'm not looking at poll numbers. What I know is that profound and that is part of the construction bonds and the 49th state, Alaska, and Russia. They are right there, they are our next door neighbor. They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska. We have got to get that gas line built, so pray for that.

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For those keeping score at home, #1 was Tina Fey and Amy Poehlan on Saturday Night Live, #2 was the real Sarah Palin interviewed by Katie Couric and #3 was the Interview Palin site. 

The financial blogging session at last week's Blog World & New Media Expo was a lot of fun. I've gotten a lot of follow up notes this week from people telling me how much they enjoyed the panel.

Larry Schwartz was kind enough to send on a few photos, shown here and below.

WSJ blog The Wallet did a short post on the panel discussion.

There were a few people live-blogging the event. KT Cat posts his thoughts here.

I also did a short radio interview with NPR New Hampshire discussing the panel. They have full audio available if you'd like to catch it.

It’s an understatement to say that these have been an interesting few weeks in the markets. The fallout from the credit crunch has become the topic du jour for all news outlets along with the political campaigns. But while the volume of coverage has gone up, it’s just added to the noise and has not provided much in the way of clarity.

I’ve relied upon the blogs on this list to provide the context for the news of the past week, just as I do on a regular basis.  Here’s the final list, as unveiled the past two weeks:

The Ten Best Financial Blogs:
10. 24/7 Wall Street
9. The Big Picture
8. Dealbreaker
7. Footnoted.org
6. Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor
5. TraderFeed
4. Wallstrip
3. Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
2. Portfolio.com Market Movers
1. Silicon Alley Insider & ClusterStock

In any top ten list there will be those that miss the cut, either because they've been edged out or because they were very similar to others in the top ten list. Here are a handful of other resources that I follow regularly, some of which came up in the comments or emails I’ve received.

• Calculated Risk
• Trader Mike
• Information Arbitrage
• EconBrowser
• Research Recap
• 10Q Detective
• FT Alphaville
• NYT Dealbook

In addition to the blogs, another interesting source of financial information for Twitter users is StockTwits. StockTwits, founded by Soren MacBeth and funded by Howard Lindzon, aggregates tweets that mention individual stocks. To post to StockTwits, simply follow StockTwits then post as usual, just inserting a $ before the ticker symbol (for example, to tweet on Goldman Sachs, you’d enter $GS). Is StockTwits just a stream of noise or can it convey useful information in 140-character snippets? You be the judge.

Which blogs did I miss? Add them in the comments.

And, look at this nifty Hank Paulson toaster that I got for free.

Under the weather, so heading back from Vegas a day early.

I'd like to leave you with my favorite quote and takeaway from yesterday's financial blogging panel.

Talking about whether the little guy can make money in the financial markets, Howard Lindzon noted:

Words of inspiration for us all.

A final thanks to Howard, Paul Kedrosky, Jim Ledbetter and Felix Salmon for joining me on the panel yesterday. The panel was lively and spirited. A few people later commented that they'd enjoyed it, feeling that it raised some interesting issue without turning contentious.

Viva Las Vegas.

More than 4,000 bloggers have converged on Las Vegas this weekend for the second annual Blog World Expo. Blog World features roughly 200 speakers speaking about all areas of blogging from Milblogs (military), godblogs, sports blogs, political blogging and blogs about virtually every topic you might imagine.

This afternoon, I will moderate the Financial Blogging panel with four terrific speakers:

• Paul Kedrosky, senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, strategist for quant fund Ten Asset Management and a frequent financial speaker on CNBC
• Felix Salmon, author of the Market Movers blog on Conde Nast Portfolio.com.
• Jim Ledbetter, Editor of the just-launched The Big Money, a Slate property; and
• Howard Lindzon, hedge fund manager and founder of Wallstrip.com

We'll cover a diverse set of issues. Obviously, we'll spend some time hearing their thoughts on the events of last week and the actions the Fed has taken to try to stop the bleeding. These four speakers are never shy to share their opinion and I'm sure we'll hear their thoughts on things like the ban on short-selling and what the market might look like in the coming months. We'll also focus on how bloggers were early to the subprime story, blogonomics and the business side of blogging and the impact of the blogosphere on the rumors that often drive trading.

This week's market events made clear the value that many of these alternative media voices add to providing understanding of critical market events. While traditional Wall Street analysts continue to play an important advisory role, their role has been diminished in recent years due in great part to the Spitzer settlement and its impact on the economics of sell-side research. Today, you're just as likely to find critical analysis coming from a hedge fund manager, an industry analyst or other opinion leaders, many of whom use blogs to communicate their ideas.

Are you at Blog World? Stop by to say hi after my session, send me an email or drop me a tweet @graubart and I'd love to say hello.

After two-plus weeks of counting down, it’s time to unveil my number one choice for the best financial blog. My #1 financial blog meets the three criteria that I set out in the first post in this series:

1.    It makes me think about things I’d otherwise not have considered
2.    It’s entertaining, witty and a bit snarky
3.    It consistently points me to information I would have otherwise missed

For a few years, following Eliot Spitzer’s investigation of equity research and the ensuing settlement, the name Henry Blodget was largely a punchline.  Fast forward a few years and Eliot Spitzer has become the punchline and Blodget has co-founded a financial blog platform that is consistently intelligent, well-written and compelling.

Silicon Alley Insider is a great example of the new model of publishing. A multi-author blog with a consistent voice and theme, Silicon Alley Insider largely covers the business side of the digital media space. 

Recently, Alley Insider launched its second blog property, ClusterStock.  ClusterStock, which uses the tagline Research and Analysis Live, focuses on a more diverse set of financial topics. ClusterStock spotlights interesting financial news and investment research, providing their own take. 

It’s not surprising that Henry Blodget is an effective financial writer. Blodget began his career as a freelance journalist before moving to Wall Street. He has a deep understanding of the Street and an analytic mind. Early in its existence, Silicon Alley Insider gained quite a bit of attention for a post where Blodget questioned the math Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker had used to forecast the revenue contribution to come from the YouTube acquisition. Henry quickly noticed that Meeker had forgotten to divide her numbers by 1,000 when computing CPM rates, so $4.8 million became $4.8 billion.  The post was quickly picked up by the blogosphere and gave Silicon Alley Insider instant credibility.

This spring, Alley Insider hired Julie Hansen, formerly with CBS College Sports, as Publisher and COO, joining Henry and former DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan, who serves as Chairman. Together, they’re taking a fantastic blog and turning it into a solid media business. Earlier today news broke that Alley Insider has hired Dealbreaker editor-in-chief John Carney as editor of ClusterStock. Based upon his history at Dealbreaker, we can expect to see more scoops and perhaps a touch more snark.

Silicon Alley Insider and ClusterStock have become must reads for those following the digital media and financial markets. And, together, they’re at the top of my list of the ten best financial blogs.

The Ten Best Financial Blogs:
10. 24/7 Wall Street
9. The Big Picture
8. Dealbreaker
7. Footnoted.org
6. Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor
5. TraderFeed
4. Wallstrip
3. Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
2. Portfolio.com Market Movers
1.Silicon Alley Insider & ClusterStock

So, here I was worried that we wouldn't have anything interesting to talk about at the Blog World Financial Bloggers panel this Saturday.  The Dow drops a thousand points and suddenly everyone's interested in Wall Street again.

If you're planning to be in Las Vegas for Blog World, be sure to circle 2:45pm Saturday for this panel.  For those who've been following my "ten best financial blogs" series of posts, three of the top five will be represented on the panel - Paul Kedrosky, Felix Salmon and (Wallstrip founder) Howard Lindzon. And the fourth panelist will be Jim Ledbetter, who timed the launch of Slate.com's new The Big Money to coincide with Mondays' five hundred point drop.

We'll discuss the current investment climate but will also dig in on topics such as blogonomics, blogs' impact on the rumor mill, the convergence between trade publishing and blogs and many other topics.  What questions do you want me to ask? Put your thoughts in the comments below.

If you plan to attend Blog World, drop me a note when you're there. You can email me at barry - at - graubart - dot - com, or send me a tweet @graubart.  I look forward to seeing you there.

Update: Dow Jones Newswires has posted an advance article on the Blog World financial blogging panel.

While practitioners can offer real-world experiences, there’s a lot to be said for traditional financial journalism.  Felix Salmon, author of the Market Movers blog on Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com, exemplifies the best in financial writing.  Felix reads everything with a skeptics eye and his posts often question the things that others accept at face value.

During the past week, I’ve probably turned to Market Movers as much as any other blog as a means of gaining insights to the rapidly changing market. Yesterday morning, a colleague asked me why I thought the markets were not responding more favorably to the AIG bailout and the positive earnings reports from Goldman and Morgan Stanley. I forwarded Felix’s post Morgan Stanley in the Crosshairs, which proposed the idea that since bondholders have emerged largely unscathed, while equity holders have been punished, that those wishing to take a position in financials are foregoing stocks for debt. Was that the main driver for the drop? I couldn’t tell you, but it certainly is a more well thought out supposition than many others I’d heard.

Perhaps it’s because of his experience working for Nouriel Roubini, but Felix shines when the markets are imploding. Instinctually, he questions the axioms of others, identifying flaws in their platitudes.

But Market Movers commands my attention even when the markets are calm. Felix often writes about blogonomics and was early to recognize the fact that blogs can be viable publishing platforms and targets for M&A events.  Of course, the most enjoyable segment for me is his (somwhat) weekly Ben Stein Watch, where he takes on the actor/author/attorney/commentator who currently pens a weekly economics column for the New York Times. As Felix is quick to point out, while Stein may have portrayed an economics teacher in Ferris Bueller, his columns suggest that he did not pay much attention to economics during his own academic years.

Felix Salmon’s Market Movers blog is thoughtful and has a clear and consistent voice with occasional dry wit. He combines strong fundamental journalism skills with a deep understanding of the financial markets. The result is a compelling read that helps users navigate the complex environment we currently face.

The Ten Best Financial Blogs:
10. 24/7 Wall Street
9. The Big Picture
8. Dealbreaker
7. Footnoted.org
6. Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor
5. TraderFeed
4. Wallstrip
3. Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
2. Portfolio.com Market Movers
1.

In my prologue to this series, I wrote that the best blogs make me think about things I would not have otherwise thought about and point me to items I would have otherwise missed. One blog that executes well on both of those scores is Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed.

Many of the best financial blogs are written by practitioners. Paul is a technology entrepreneur, strategist for quant firm Ten Asset Management and academic. He serves as senior fellow for the Kauffman Foundation and is a frequent guest on CNBC. 

Paul’s pithy posts frequently point the reader to great information they might have missed. This morning, he linked to a series of papers on the credit crisis in one post, while providing the video of former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg on Charlie Rose in another. But Paul also provides thought-provoking posts questioning the prevailing wisdom, as exemplified by another post this morning, this one arguing that the concept of moral hazard is overblown.  His intellectual curiosity goes way beyond traditional finance and he often posts on weather-related issues, sports science and other esoteric issues.  Paul also is a data visualization fan and frequently shares interesting visual maps.

If the definition of a successful financial blog is one which makes you think in ways you otherwise wouldn’t have, Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed is surely a 10.

The Ten Best Financial Blogs:
10. 24/7 Wall Street
9. The Big Picture
8. Dealbreaker
7. Footnoted.org
6. Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor
5. TraderFeed
4. Wallstrip
3. Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
2.
1.