Choose Your Blogs Carefully

Some blogs may offer useful information, but even their fans believe you should approach them skeptically.

Robert Harding Financial’s Jeremy Mitchell said to beware because “Many who post these types of blogs are not professionals, most are not even licensed to render financial advice.”  Financial Planning Unlimited’s Patrick Valenty handles this challenge by limiting his blog visits to those associated with the Money Show or “reputable financial magazines.” 

Some advisors simply don’t have the time to visit them on top of the other tasks that crowd their days. Eve Kaplan of Kaplan Financial Advisors said, “I’m sure there are many useful blogs out there but my problem, which I believe many other advisors face, is time. None of us has enough of it.” Moreover, she’s somewhat skeptical of blogs, “I associate blogs with very subjective views on politics, etc.”

Robert Harding Financial’s Jeremy Mitchell agrees that time is tight. “I think that financial advisors today are pummeled with news and information, as are many consumers.  The trick is to find the one or two sources in any given medium (newspaper, magazine, web) that appeal and revisit them regularly.” 

In defense of blogs, M.A. Whelan Financial’s Maureen Whelan said that those who post “nonsense” on blogs will often get ignored of called on their misinformation.

You might wonder who’s reading the hundreds of investment blogs that financial advisors ignore. Clearly, there are more retail investors than professionals doing research on the web, so it makes sense for bloggers to target them. In the opinion of some industry observers, many investment bloggers are just in it to inflate their egos or simply for the money—using search engine optimization to attract web surfers and earn revenue when surfers click on advertisements on their blogs. Accordingly, they say, blog content focuses on stock picking and market timing, rather than topics that interest financial advisors.

So, advisors who’d like to dip their toes into the blogosphere should step carefully.  Check out the bloggers’ credentials and see how their opinions and analysis line up with more traditional sources. You can also see what your colleagues are reading. We’ve listed some of their choices in the sidebar to this article.

Susan Weiner, CFA, is a writer specializing in investment and wealth
management. She blogs at investmentwriting.blogspot.com.

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