Some Blogroll Highlights

As the year winds down, many traders and bloggers have put things on autopilot. While this is understandable, on my blogroll I noticed several important exceptions to this rule. Four blogs – three of which were launched in 2009 – have consistently hit high notes during the year and just happen to do so again during this slow period.

Rob Hanna at Quantifiable Edges is the multi-year veteran of the group. For those who may not be familiar with Rob’s work, he has compiled Quantifiable Edges Greatest Hits of 2009. This monthly retrospective may be the perfect introduction to a blog that is an excellent resource for those attempting to make the jump from a stock picker to a master of indicators and strategies.

Two other quantitatively-oriented strategies and systems guys just happened to be out with fine complementary pieces today. Like Rob, Frank at Trading the Odds can be counted on for thorough research and analysis covering a wide variety of strategies, which is always captured in a compelling and comprehensive manner. A former frequent commenter at VIX and More, Frank decided to set up his own electronic canvas earlier this year to have a more organized platform to share his thinking – and we are all better off for it. Today’s How to Make a Million (%) Trading the SPYDER – Part One is a fine example of Frank’s approach, leaving the reader with substantial food for thought and the promise of some excellent courses still to come.

In looking at David Varadi’s CSS Analytics blog, I was stunned to see that the blog is less than a half a year old. With all the high quality content that David has managed to shoehorn into just a few months, I’m sure my oversight can be forgiven. If this sounds like hyperbole, check for yourself. Start with today’s Relative Strength 101 and keep reading back in time until you lose interest. Warning: July comes up faster than you think…

Last but certainly not least is Tyler Craig’s options-oriented Tyler’s Trading. Today Tyler assembled a Blast from the Past which captures his top ten posts of the year. For the beginning to intermediate options trader, these articles combine important topics, excellent graphics, and facile prose.

Apart from coming up with something interesting to say on a regular basis, my biggest challenge here is undoubtedly maintaining an up-to-date, high quality blogroll that incorporates a wide variety of interests and perspectives from a mix of popular and semi-obscure bloggers. There are few things as invigorating, however, as discovering a fresh new voice. Let’s hope 2010 proves to be as fruitful in this regard as 2009 was.

Disclosure: Quantifiable Edges and the VIX and More Subscriber Newsletter are available as part of a bundle (with ETF Rewind) in Blogger Triple Play

Blogging Network a Better Buy Than BusinessWeek?

I consider myself a trader who happened to fall into blogging originally as a means to create a stimulating diversion during the slow portion of the trading day. Almost three years into blogging, there is now a newsletter and a book on the way (yes, it is still a work in process), so now it appears that I have become a de facto member of the electronic media to boot.

Of all the content that appears on the blog, one which I rarely talk about, but take great pride in, is the list of “Blogs I Frequent” I maintain in the right hand column. Of the 300 or so feeds I subscribe to, this is what I consider to be the 80 blogs that are absolutely essential reading. This eclectic group spans a broad range of issues and individual biases. Any one of them might lead a reader down some bumpy intellectual roads or occasional dead ends from time to time, but as a group, these voices are consistently my best sources for stimulating new information and ideas.

I was thinking about all of this when I read that Bloomberg bought BusinessWeek for a sum described as in the $2 million to $5 million range. Surely the aggregate value of my blogroll has to be at least that of BusinessWeek.

For fun – because this is just a stimulating diversion after all is said and done – I went to the How Much Is Your Blog Worth? feature at the Business Opportunities Weblog to get one opinion on the value of my blogroll. Using a valuation methodology based on Technorati linking data, the Business Opportunities Weblog was able calculate the value of 49 of the 80 blogs on my blogroll. The aggregate value for these 49 blogs was $3.9 million dollars and since I was unable to obtain values for such media heavyweights as Bespoke Investment Group, Zero Hedge, Calculated Risk and The Kirk Report, among others, I have little doubt that the value of my blogroll is north of the $5 million figure at the top end of the BusinessWeek range.

For the record, in honor of Casey Kasem, I have reproduced below a list of the VIX and More Top 40 Most Valuable Blogs.

Go ahead and read BusinessWeek, but clearly there is more value to be had here.

Bloomberg, you have my email address.

[source: Business Opportunities Weblog]

Blogroll Additions and Other VIX and More Changes

When I first started this blog, the reason was as much to create my own personal investment portal as anything else. As such, I have always spent a lot of time trying to shoehorn the best of a broad range of perspectives into my blogroll (“Blogs I Frequent”). Now that I have long since transitioned to subscribing to feeds, I do not keep the VIX and More blogroll as up to date as it should be. Recently I have pruned some blogs that appear to be inactive and have added several others that I can highly recommend:

• MarketSci
  
  
• Market Rewind
  
  
• Bull Bear Trader

In addition to the blogroll changes, I now have a total of four posts in a new section I have titled “VIX – Educational Posts”. See the upper right hand corner of the blog for more details. In the next week or so, I intend to add some new posts about implied volatility and historical volatility.

Also in the right hand column, I have added new section I am calling “Aggregator Communities Featuring VIX and More”. These sites republish some of what appears on this blog, but more importantly they do an excellent editorial job of culling what they consider to be some of the best posts from the top bloggers out there. I am pleased to be a regular contributor to each of these communities and encourage readers to test drive these sites.

Going forward, I have given some thought to how this blog might continue to evolve, including more of a global perspective, an emphasis on asset classes other than equities, increased commentary on macroeconomic issues and current events, etc. If readers have any suggestions about what they would like to see more of, this would be a good place to leave a comment.

Yes, I’m Frequenting More Blogs These Days

I’m sure nobody bothers to pay attention to this, but I periodically tweak the “Blogs I Frequent” section of VIX and More whenever a particular whim hits me. Since I’ve had that set of links up for almost a year, I thought I should clarify what it is and why certain blogs are there.

First, when I began blogging I had no idea what a feed was and I was under the mistaken impression that a blog would be the best way for me to keep track of links to all of my favorite blogs. That approach worked for awhile, until my news appetite expanded to the point where I needed to scroll down to access all my information source links and the ‘simplicity’ of the approach became too cumbersome for my liking. Fortunately, necessity birthed not just invention, but some technology test drives as well, and I settled on Bloglines as my favorite tool for managing feeds, as I detailed back in April.

I mention all of this because Bloglines is my primary news aggregation source 99.9% of the time, delivering 242 feeds on a relatively timely basis. Every once in awhile, Bloglines has technical difficulties and I resort to a backup system. Usually that backup takes the form of Google Reader, but there are some occasions where I prefer to fall back on the blog.

Now I trade primarily as a result of charts, technical analysis, market sentiment indicators and the like, but I don’t particularly enjoy looking at everyone else’s charts, which is why the list of the blogs I frequent has a disproportionately fundamental and macroeconomic focus and why the sequence (and invisible grouping) might appear chaotic. Ultimately, my blogroll is a somewhat arbitrary subset of my Bloglines feeds, with preference given to sites that I rarely if ever see on other blogrolls.

For all these reasons, I have recently added three important voices to my blogroll:

• Teresa Lo - InVivoAnalytics.com
  
  
• Eric Roseman - Roseman Eruptions
  
  
• Tom Drake - Putting the Pieces Together

Finally, thanks to all who have made VIX and More a part of their blogroll or personal reading list during the past year.

Necrology Update

Last week it was Rostropovich; this week it’s Kevin’s Market Blog. It’s tough when your favorites pass on. Fortunately, in Kevin’s case he’s still with us; he’s just moving on to better things in the non-blog world.

The good news is that each departed friend in my blogroll creates room for a new one in my self-imposed limit of 32 blogs. As such, I’d like to formally welcome the most recent additions to the VIX and More blogroll:

• Toro’s Running of the Bulls – pointed commentary, superb graphics, and a wide-ranging list of targets
  
  
• CXO Advisory Group – thought-provoking stock market research you won’t find anywhere else
  
  
• Infectious Greed – Paul Kedrosky’s perspectives on investments, the VC world, and everything in between
  
  
• Yaser Anwar – like Kevin, Yaser manages to strike the perfect balance between the a fundamental, technical and informational perspective on investing