The graphic below comes from Clusterstock’s Chart of the Day; ING asked investors where they turn to find investment ideas and/or advice. Behind the obvious answer, myself (how is it not closer to 100%!), financial blogs and web sites are the clear favorite particularly among the subset aged 21-39 yrs.
This chart may be shocking to some, but with the rapid growth in financial blogging over the last few years it is not surprising to us. At Ockham, we still watch CNBC and other business television regularly, but it seems less people are turning to that outlet as often as TV and Radio are getting roughly half the attention that online resources receive in this survey. Content consumers are trending towards the new media more and more because it gives the little guy consumer more power and is often free. How often do CNBC viewers get bored with a certain discussion and change the channel? That is not a problem with web resources; all information is consumed at your discretion and at your leisure. Financial newspapers and periodicals seem to provide some semblance of a bridge between the old and the new media, having their hand in both styles.
There is a wealth of information and opinion literally just a few clicks away, and greater information is almost always a benefit to investors. However, with that much data available, investors can become bogged down in what we call “noise”, that useless content or the sheer volume of content can serve more to distract or even misinform rather than inform or educate. This is one of the reasons that we have developed RazorWire financial new monitoring, which attempts to cut through the noise by identifying each time a stock is mentioned by a respected finance blog or financial television. It is an admittedly imperfect attempt to simplify the massive pipe of information available to investors looking for data on stocks.
