The best finance news websites: A wealth of information! - SmartBrief

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The best finance news websites: A wealth of information!

Are you getting your finance news from the best sources possible? Here are the top websites that SmartBrief regularly includes in our finance newsletters.

5 min read

Finance

The best finance news websites:  A wealth of information!

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People no longer have to wait for the next print edition of The Wall Street Journal to find out what’s going on in the finance world or immerse themselves in industry-specific terminology to understand the landscape.

A plethora of internet resources are providing updates, explanations and other forms of knowledge about finance and stocks, giving both small businesses and individuals sources of easily accessed, up-to-date information. Personal finance, market activity and government regulation all have expert-produced content available online, with many people currently focusing on economic recovery after the pandemic.

As with so much of the internet, sorting through all of the material out there presents its own challenge. What is the best website for financial news? It depends to some extent on what you’re looking for, but we’ve assembled a list of the top financial news sites that work best for most people, and sorted it into two categories.

Here are the top finance news sources that we regularly include in SmartBrief for CFOs, our daily rundown of the most important finance news.

 

The Stock Market

If you want focused reporting about what the financial markets are doing, these sites are the places to go. Some include more general financial advice and business news, but they really excel at keeping readers informed about stock activity.

Certain sites actually provide services beyond the latest news. Wisebread particularly recommends The Motley Fool, for example, which offers investor forums in addition to investing news articles and, for a yearly payment, consultation with online advisers.

CNN Markets and The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, benefit from history and resources, since both are the digital arms of established news sources. Reviewers at MakeUseOf also were impressed by CNN Markets’ layout, calling it “one of the easiest places to browse market topics.” The Journal, as the venerable paper is often called, provides email alerts through its site so that users can be notified about developments in topics that interest them. It grabbed the third slot in Aelieves April ranking of finance sites.

Experienced investors will find in-depth content at MarketWatch, another site published by Dow Jones, which came in just ahead of the flagship on the Aelieve list. A top-of-page ticker display with updates and the option for account holders to customize the site’s layout feature in the presentation, while Investopedia mentions its real-time streaming news, analysis and global coverage. 

Yahoo! Finance casts a wider net, presenting a headline-stuffed homepage and aggregating content from various sites. It led the list of Wisebread’s sites for people in a hurry, in part, because it offers watchlists for favorite stocks. Those filters will pull the stock updates themselves, but also show users any stories related to them.

Additional finance news sites worth mentioning include Google Finance, which is the tech company’s customizable dashboard for news and global market tracking. Lastly, Seeking Alpha is also worth a look for those interested in a crowdsourced view of the latest market news.

 

Personal and General Finance

As good as all the sites above are, however, some of the best financial information websites don’t focus as much on stock quotes or other market data. Personal finance and money matters for small businesses are also valuable topics with wide audiences, particularly as most people and companies are having to make some drastic changes because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The categories have some overlap, naturally. Nearly all of the personal finance or general finance sites have an investment section displayed prominently on their homepages, and some go further to help users on both sides.

This is particularly true for Forbes, which took first place with both Aelieve and AlphaGamma. The site’s Money section offers stock market highlights, but it also includes articles on topics such as Medicare costs and how the Federal Reserve’s actions affect small businesses. As with The Wall Street Journal, its advantage is also the name and history: AlphaGamma says the site “is the home page of the world’s business leaders.”

Another combination site with a long history is The Financial Times. Its homepage combines stories about banks and stock markets with those about industries, companies and career trends. There’s even a section called “How to Spend it,” where the Times’ writers recommend products or services.

Kiplinger moves toward the personal finance end of the spectrum. Tax procedure, retirement and estate planning, and bank ratings are all prominent aspects of its coverage. MakeUseOf specifically noted that it has a whole section devoted to the basics of personal money management, which offers advice on Social Security and discussions of books such as “Nickled and Dimed.” 

Finally, CNBC.com has a Personal Finance page that combines news articles with guidance relevant to current events, such as help dealing with extended unemployment or the pros and cons of reverse mortgages.

Many other options exist for financial news, from the finance sections of other major sites, such as the Los Angeles Times or BBC, to articles on money-coaching pages like NerdWallet. As with everything, consumers and businesses alike can often benefit from multiple sources of information — but the above sites are some of the most dependable, high-quality places to start looking.

If you found this overview of the best websites for finance news useful, you can subscribe to SmartBrief for CFOs for free daily finance updates. For even more great news coverage, you can subscribe to any of SmartBriefs 275+ free newsletters.

Isabel Kunkle is a technology and telecom editor at SmartBrief. She lives in Boston.