With the blogosphere expanding even faster than the hedge fund universe, the editors of Pensions & Investments decided to take a look at some of the most popular blogs in the finance, money management and pension industries to see how they stack up.
Using P&Is own Blog Bank as a starting point, the editors rigorously reviewed more than two dozen blogs, from All About Alpha to the Wall Street Journals MarketBeat. Blogs were ranked on criteria such as how often they are updated, how engaging the writing is, whether actionable information is offered, whether links to other relevant sources are provided and whether the blog is entertaining. Judges also had the opportunity to offer general comments.
Since the blogs differed sometimes significantly in their content and format, a scale was created to level the playing field. Total scores were added up and then average scores were derived from that sum.
The editors then awarded gold, silver and bronze awards to the top three blogs (which were the top three in both total and average score categories). The Big Picture, DealBreaker and Infectious Greed took top honors.
The following provides snapshots of P&Is top three blogs as well as 10 honorable mentions, in order of their popularity among the editors.