Dead links? Please let me know by emailing mtl@mtlfutures.com. Your help is very much appreciated.
TOP-TIER NEWS & ANALYSIS
- Bloomberg News - My favorite source for news and updates of the financial markets. See the below for some of the awesome features on this site:
- Bloomberg TV - Free news channel with 3 channels for the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
- Bloomberg Radio - Just as good as Bloomberg TV, but better when bandwidth is an issue.
- Bloomberg Gov't Rates - Free yield-curve data for 7 markets, including the U.S., UK, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and Brazil.
- Bloomberg Calendar
- Seeking Alpha - A great, but lesser-known, site for news and cutting-edge analysis of the markets.
- zero hedge - A fantastic blog/news-source from a group of slightly pessimistic, but overly-realistic misanthropes.
- Financial Times - A superb publication for true finance professionals!
- The Long Room - An exclusive blog room for finance professionals. It claims to be unsuitable for retail customers, but I think it's probably all for show.
- Financial Times Blog - Some of the industry's finest use this blog as outlet for their views.
- CNBC - The industry standard in market news.
- CNBC Plus - Access to 3 live streams of CNBC News U.S., Europe, and Asia, plus videos on-demands, for $9.95/month.
- Phil's Stock World - A syndicated site of several top-tier blogs.
SECOND-TIER MARKET NEWS & ANALYSIS
- REUTERS - An industry standard for markets news and data. However, I am not aware of any acute superiorities.
- The Economist - A staple of intellectuals across the nation. The guy carrying this around town is either pedantic or poseur.
- The Wall Street Journal Digital Network - Honestly, I don't ever bother with this stuff. It ain't bad, but it ain't anything special:
- The Street - Good to mix things up every once in a while.
- Investor's Business Daily - IBD is pretty solid, but you gotta pay $259.00/yr or $28.95/mo for access to the good stuff. However, they do have a free TV channel that's available online.
- Forbes - I really like Forbes because it has a broader focus on business that is lacking from most other sources on the markets, but I seldom reference it for trading.
MARKET QUOTES & CHARTS
- CME DataSuite - Free, live quotes for many of the CME Group's contracts. You usually have to pay $$$ for this kind of data.
- CME Group Product Calendar - Ultra-handy reference for options and futures expirations.
- MSN Money Central - MSN features real-time stock quotes, with no sign-in required, from the BATS Trading Network. The downside is that I haven't found a good way to import the data into an external data feed (e.g., Excel).
- ADM Investor Services - ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) has good free charts that are relatively easy-to-use and quotes that cover most of the commodities futures markets.
- FutureSource - I really like the versatility of this site's charting package. Make sure you sign-up for their premium charts 'cause it's absolutely free!
- Yahoo! Finance - The very best thing about Yahoo Finance is that I am able to directly export its data to a spreadsheet for in-depth, real-time analysis.
- Google Finance - Google incorporates its powerful search-engine technology and web traffic analytics into finance. Screen stocks, identify emergent trends, and scan news using Google's uber-cool back-end.
ECONOMIC CALENDARS - I like to switch between using a variety of economic calendars because it's always good to get a different perspective on the same indicator.
- Bloomberg Economic Calendar
- CME Group Economic Calendar
- DailyFX Economic Calendar
- Forex Live Economic Calendar
- Yahoo! Economic Calendar
COMMODITIES RESEARCH
- Commodity News for Tomorrow - The CME Group, in cooperation with Dow Jones, published this daily newsletter. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in trading commodities
- CME-CRB Ethanol Outlook - An excellent weekly newsletter published by the CME, in conjunction with the CRB.
- CFTC's Market Reports - The Commoditiy Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is the federal government's regulatory arm for the futures markets, but they also publish some really data that is definitely worth following. Most notable are the following
- COT (Committments of Traders) - A really publication that tell us a lot about REAL open interest.
- This Month in Futures Markets
- Economic Analysis
- USDA - The United States Dep't of Agriculture publishes the most well respected and followed reports on topics like crop production and weather. Any serious grain trader must be familiar with the USDA's regular publications
- Research, Education, and Economics (REE)
- Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
- Economic Research Service (ERS)
- National Agricultural Library (NAL)
- National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)
- National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA)
- USDA Newsroom
- Office of the Chief Economist
- Commodities Research Bureau - The CRB has a long history dating back to 1934. It's flagship product is the Commodities Yearbook.
- U.S. Energy Information Agency - The EIA is a lesser known agency of the Department of Energy, but will only grow in importance as energy becomes the currency of the future.
- U.S. Department of the Interior - An essential source for traders concerned with commodities that must be extracted from the interior: metals, coal, hydro-electric power, etc...
INTEREST RATES & MONEY MARKET RESEARCH
- FRB: Economic Research and Data - The best one-stop shop for data that pertains to monetary policy, including interest rates, inflation, consumer credit and more. The more notable stops include:
- Bloomberg Bonds & Rates - Good synopsis of international yield curve data.
- The Dynamic Yield Curve - A neat tool that shows the yield curve over time in relation to the S&P 500 Index.
- U.S. Treasury Daily Yield Curve Rates - Great source of historical data for U.S. zero rates on varying maturities. Excel can scrape this data into a spreadsheet that automatically updates for anyone interested in custom analytics.
- CME Group Interest Rate Products -The CME has some really great resources on its interest rate products, including papers on strategy, papers on treasury futures in general, a tool that quickly calculates duration, a tool that estimates implied change in the Fed Funds Rate, and more!
- CME Group Interest Rate Product Resource Center - Mostly the same information, but different layout.
- Interest Rates Newsletter - So-so.
- Treasury Futures Empirical Duration Tool - Duration is a very useful calculation that tells us how price-sensitive a bond is to a 1 basis point change in yield by measuring how much time it takes for a bond to pay off its purchase price by its internal cash flows. Math junkies would say that duration is the tangent line of any given price & yield of a bond's convexity.
- FedWatch - I look at this tool before every Fed announcement to determine what the market thinks is going to happen to the Federal Funds Target Rate.
- Interest Rates Inter-Commodity Spreads - I often have to review what the different kinds of spreads are called.
- ECB Statistics - The European Central Bank publishes its own statistical releases that complements those released by the U.S. Fed.
EQUITY RESEARCH
- Standard & Poor's - More than just equity indices.
- Standard & Poor's Index Data Platform - Access free reports and papers. You gotta pay $$$ (I was quoted $10,000/yr) for access to data pertaining to index constituents, however.
- CME Group Equity Index Research Center -
- Equity Fair Value
- Month-End Fair Value Procedures - Details how equity products are marked-to-market with theoretical fair value.
- CNBC Pre-Markets - Major equity index fair values released daily between 10:00 AM EST.
- IndexArb.com - Second-to-none for research pertaining to equity fair value, a very useful measure for valuing the present value of future prices. Be sure to look at all of their pages, as they provide some very in-depth data that I have been unable to located elsewhere.
- Program Trading Research (HL Camp & Company) -Similar to IndexArb.com, with a greater emphasis on algorithmic trading.
- Earnings
- Earnings.com - The best of the bunch. They are a subsidiary of Reuter-Thompson so their data is reliable and updated frequently. Their web-app is also kick-ass, as it provide options to view earnings calendars, economic release calendars, and more. If you want to trade equities, you need to bookmark this site now!
- Yahoo Earnings Calendar - Another good source to get company earinhg
- Earnings Whispers - This site attempts to give its readers an inside scoop into company earnings. I have heard good things, but I haven't used it myself because it is tailored for individual stock trading, whereas I focus on systemic earnings for equity indices.
- Morningstar Document Research (FKA, "10k Wizard")
FOREX RESEARCH
- DailyFX - DailyFX is perhaps the best all-around source for the Forex spot marketplace. Features include news, analysis, tutorials, a fantatic economic calendar, AWESOME free charts, and real-time data from FXCM Active Trader. See below for my favorite features:
- DailyFX Forex Rates - Free curreny pair quotes from FXCM's Active Trader. Cool!
- DailyFX PowerCharts - The best free charting utility out there. Unfortunately, it only covers the major currency pairs
- Forex Live - Only a few guys actually post stuff, but they offer a viewpoint that is unattached to institutional orthodoxy.
FINANCE & TRADING EDUCATION
- Bionic Turtle - The very best source out there for financial risk education. I check his blogs regularly, as they often provide very good spreadsheet models of various financial instruments. This is what finance is all about!
- Also, check out Bionic Turtle's YouTube Channel!
- LBR Group - Linda Bradford Raschke's website dedicated to educating traders with an emphasis on risk & money management. Personally, I have not studied these methods since they rely largely on technical analysis, but I have heard nothing but positive reviews.
- CME Group Education
- CME Group Academy - Worth checking out.
- Briefing's Learning Center - It looks good on first inspection.
- QuanTube - I just discovered this neat spot for educational videos on quant-related stuff.
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
- Market Profile - Market Profile provides one of the least biased technical views of the market. It's a good way of looking at market tendency and price probability across shorter time scales (30 mins to 3 days).
FUTURES MARKET & INDUSTRY REGULATION
OTHER NOTABLES
- Floored - Awesome documentary detailing the meteoric rise and steady decline of the Chicago trading floors!
- U.S. Census Bureau - The CB releases some very important economic indicators.
- Finviz.com - An awesome site for financial visualizations.
- Maps - Financial heat maps for the S&P 500, emerging markets, and more. A really cool & interesting way to display data.
- TED.com - Talks that can change world...
- Futures Press - Some decent educational and news resources available here from the "PitGuru".
