If you invest to any significant extent, you've probably heard or seen of CNBC and its increasingly famous host of personalities that include Maria Bartiromo, Joe Kernen, Tom Costello, Ron Insana, and Sue Herera among others. CNBC.com is the companion site to the TV channel and it's a good complement but hardly a substitute for the rich amount of information that you can gain from watching a few hours on TV.

Onto the review:

Site Layout

CNBC.com has recently revamped its site layout. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it's not for the better. The new format includes displaying most major pages in three column arrangement with additional subdivisions in some cases. For pure text such as in newspapers, this may be an acceptable format. However, for a combination of hyperlinks and graphics, this format does NOT work very well at all. I still have difficulty finding things even though I'm a frequent visitor to the site. Furthermore, I believe that they've reduced the font size in order to cram more information on a page. I'm not impressed with the new changes. I'd rather have the old format. Check out the home page if you'd like to see what I'm talking about.

http://www.cnbc.com

Like most sites, there are several tabs at the top that bring you to major subdivisions of the site - My Portfolios, Market & News, Research Center, Personal Finance, Career Center, Message Boards, and CNBC-TV. Within each of these category pages, the clutter of the site improves but there is still the three column display format that I'm not particularly enamored with.

Site Loading Time

The loading time of each page is average. None of the pages are particularly graphic heavy - even those that include a large number of charts.

Site Information

Quotes and Charting

Real time quotes are available but you must be a registered member (free) to use them. Otherwise, you'll get the quotes that have a 15-20 minute delay.

Charting options are good and attractive. They are displayed in the same format as those on the TV channel. There are a decent number of charting options that you can add including Bollinger bands, moving averages, stochastic graphs, and momentum.

Research

There is a quite a lot of proprietary information found on the site, some written by the TV personalities, some written in conjunction with the MSNBC website. Perhaps the most valuable or interesting research comes from the archive of picks from TV guests and analysts. While analysts are rarely accurate or even correct in their predictions, some of the information that they provide is interesting and the site includes a few tidbits of information with each stock pick.

Apart from the TV content and some proprietary information, there is little else in terms of research. No links to Zacks or S&P reports - you'll have to use your broker's access for that.

Site Personalization

Like most other financial sites, you can enter in all your portfolio information and have CNBC track your portfolio performance. You can also sign up for email alerts when stocks hit certain price targets. You can also sign up for a daily email from the site that gives you a wrapup of the day's markets.

Perhaps the most unique thing about CNBC.com is the ability to have a personalized stock. It opens up in a separate window and doesn't take up too much screen space. Not a bad idea and it works well.

Site Integration

There is pretty good integration with the TV channel. There are biographies of all the TV personalities and separate web pages for each of the major shows. Also, you can email your questions to TV guests and they will be read on-air and answered. Pretty impressive.

Site Audience

Most people are not going to visit this site by accident unless they're fairly interested in the market and have watched the TV channel. It's not like Yahoo users that might stumble into Yahoo Finance by accident. Therefore, the level of writing on the site is at an intermediate level. However, like the TV channel, the more time you spend reading and learning, the more accustomed you'll become to the jargon.

Non Stock Related Content

Most of the content on the site is strongly oriented to stocks and more specifically US stocks. Like the TV channel, CNBC became hugely popular in the recently ended bull market. They have structured their shows and guests around those stocks that are most popular. Their online content also reflects this. As a result, there is a huge emphasis on US stocks and in particular tech stocks. There is little content on international equities or bonds.

The personal finance and career center subdivisions are average but the emphasis of the site remains US stocks.

Summary

If you are a frequent watcher of CNBC, the site is definitely worth a visit for the times when you miss a segment or a show. Also, if you aren't fortunate enough to get CNBC, you may want to visit the site to see some of what you've been missing. A good site overall. It could be better with a better site layout and broader content but what's there is excellent.

Recommended: Yes