SmartMoney.com: The Silent Leader
Written: Mar 02 '00
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Pros: Great articles, research and amazing charting
Cons: Daily portfolio tracking is just mediocre
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| mgreber's Full Review: SmartMoney |
As far as financial magazines go, my favorite is Smart Money. Therefore, I am possibly biased in my similar fervor over the corresponding website, SmartMoney.com. First of all, I have to dole out some initial props for not simply replicating articles from the magazine and leaving it at that. (See: Fortune.com.) In fact, it takes what is in the magazine and improves upon it, no short order indeed.
The Pros:
THE ARTICLES: The magazine boasts writers from the Wall Street Journal, and these same writers complement the excellent website staff. There are up-to-date articles on current market activity, thorough sector analysis, columnists, etc. It's excellent, and the quantity roughly matches the quality. Save for perhaps CBSMarketwatch, no other financial website I've visited has so many proprietary articles. They don't just stick straight to the stock market either. Recent website articles compared online car shopping websites, and politics are generally also well represented. In short, the articles are the cream of the financial website crop. Grade: A
STOCK ANALYSIS: First, the portfolio. Since this is the most frequent use -- just watching and tracking stocks, it's the most important. This is where SmartMoney.com falls short. The charts exceed the first level of Yahoo Finance, but pale to Quicken.com. The columns are customizable, but the options of what to see are limited, and some good data is missing (e.g., 52-week high/low, etc.) Mediocre, at best. I don't use this on a daily basis. However, the rest of the stock analysis tools are fantastic. The charting is especially impressive -- and, as far as such things go, sexy. Yes, that's right, sexy. If you display a 5-year chart on a stock, just drag your cursor across the chart. As your mouse moves over the stock line, text boxes appear showing the exact price at that period in time.
That's COOL.
Furthermore, you can add indexes, competitors (it even preselects many), etc. There's no way around this -- this is cool stuff. Similarly, this is the same area that you would look up financials, insider trading, etc. Adding to the "cool" factor is the Stock Map. This separates your portfolio holdings and shades certain stocks either green or red (I think) depending on how they performed that day. Apparently, this increases in color depending on the severity of the move. What's also cool is you can click through, and it makes sounds. It's fluff, really...but good fluff. The data itself -- as with any free internet website -- is available anywhere. The format is what rocks here. [I'm pretty sure that "rocks" is a financial term.] If the portfolio displays were at the same level as Quicken, this would be a landslide. As it is...GRADE: B+
MUTUAL FUND ANALYSIS: You get the same level of charting and interface as you do with the stocks. You can chart returns over numerous pre-selected periods, or customize that as well. Additionally, you can screen for the best (and worst) 25 performing mutual funds, choosing from a wide array of sectors and periods of time. Pretty impressive. For most funds, it will show you the top holdings, duration of fund managers, etc. Only Morningstar does a better job, in my mind, and that's the entire purpose of their business. This is top drawer stuff. GRADE: A-
PLANNING AND ADVICE: This is where SmartMoney.com runs away from the pack. Like their magazine, the site is full of stock ideas -- and they also are honest and consistent in reporting the performance of their picks. They provide planning tools -- analyze your company's 401K plan, use the Roth IRA calculator, or figure out how much you need to save to reach a targeted goal. It's all there and it's easy to understand. Given this and the stock analysis, this is a great place to analyze data. There isn't quite as much access to proprietary reports as other places have (and certainly not as much as you'd get from your broker), but you can navigate around here well. More importantly, it's better than any of its competitors. GRADE: A-
LAYOUT AND INTERFACE: I'm not a graphic designer or anything, but this stuff is important to me. For a site to keep my attention, it has to at least be visually adequate. I really think that this is one area that most financial websites fail miserably at. SmartMoney.com is solidly above average, but again - that's a low average. The best I've seen are The Motley Fool and probably Morningstar.com. That being said, this site is easy to navigate through and logically organized. The color schemes are easy on the eyes and the limited graphics (again, not the charting, but the site graphics) are decent. There's just so much more that they could be doing. GRADE: B
OVERALL: The biggest shortfall of the site is the portfolio tracking. It takes awhile to load, and the overall shortfalls of it mean that I don't use it to check my stocks daily -- which means I don't visit the entire site as much as I otherwise would. That's unfortunate, because the other parts of the site tromp the competition. Nonetheless, the overall site grade, in relation to its peers, is at the top of the class. GRADE: A-
Recommended:
Yes
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mgreber
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