Financial News

Making a trade without up-to-date news is like driving a car blindfolded – you may get down the road a ways but over time you’re going to run into problems. Timing your entry and exit for a given trade is of great importance if you’re going to protect your investment. General market news, sector news, economic news and individual equity news all play a part in determining a shares supply, demand and therefore price. Take the blindfold off, read the financial news. Here are a few good places to start.

  BBC Business

The BBC Business website offers up a load of financial information, comment and analysis from all over the world. But the beauty of the BBC is the speed in which it updates it’s website. When a big financial story breaks and you’re watching your portfolio spin into a nosedive, head for the BBC and chances are they’ll have at least the bones of the story online within minutes. They also offer a nice little pop-up application – theMarketwatch ticker. The Marketwatch ticker provides values of the four major currency pairs (Sterling, Dollar, Euro and Yen) and six key stock indexes – London’s FTSE 100, Frankfurt’s Dax, Euronext Paris’ Cac 40, and Wall Street’s Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq and Standard & Poor’s 500. Click on any of the indexes or currencies to see graphs showing its movements during the trading day and over the past three months or click on the winners and losers tab on top of the Marketwatch ticker to see the best and worst performing shares of the day on the London Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, Frankfurt’s Deutsche Boerse and Euronext Paris. The markets in a nutshell.

Visit BBC Business

  Bloomberg

Launched back in 1995 Bloomberg.com has consistently ranked among the world’s top financial web sites and is a great place to catch any breaking financial news. Investors will find a host of investment tools including calculators, stock quotes and interactive charts. Market Data on Bloomberg.com covers most regions of the world and includes data on exchange-traded funds, stocks, bonds and currencies.

Visit Bloomberg

  Financial Times

The FT is considered the Bible amongst City workers – as is evidenced by the number of suits spreading it’s salmon coloured sheets on any tube train you care to catch heading toward Bank of a morning. Its free online version offers only a glimpse of what is available to subscribers.Subscription affords the user tons of in-depth fundamental information on all London and New York listed companies as well as market analysis and comment. Email alerts on breaking news as well as sector summaries and a useful search feature that accesses 5 years of archived material. The Financial Times also provides a portfolio tracking tool but prices are delayed which is a little disappointing. With the depth of quality free financial information on the net perhaps paying for a subscription to the FT may be seen as a luxury, but there’s no doubting the quality of the financial info it offers its users andsubscription levels speak for themselves. Give their 2 week free trial a whirl and make up your own mind.

Visit Financial Times

  Guardian Business

The Guardian’s online business section offers the usual London daily business fare along with some engaging columns providing an often refreshing financial perspective.

Visit Guardian Business

  Stockopedia

At Stockopedia their goal is to bring all the financial content available on the web, whether free or subscriber based, onto one platform and deliver it to investors based on their interests.

Stockopedia gathers the latest investing ideas from top independent research houses, bloggers and financial publishers on the site. They categorise the content and their email updates will keep you informed about what they are saying along with the latest news on the companies you follow in the UK.

Visit Stockopedia

  Times Online Business

Loads of local and world business news, market commentary, business features, columns and analysis.

Visit Times Online Business