What Are the Top 10 Finance Blogs?

What are the top finance blogs? Searching for a quality source of financial information -- for personal use or just for tracking your favorite companies -- is no small order. The amount of financial information available online is staggering. Finance blogs have risen in recent years as an excellent source to locate not only factual information about all things money; they've become an excellent source of opinion and analysis. From company quarterly report tracking and live-blogging, to time-tested tips on 529 savings plans and when to refinance your mortgage, these finance blogs put an interesting and fresh spin on what many consider to be boring financial information. Without a good deal of financial know-how, though, most folks would be up a creek without a paddle in a manner of speaking.

Where should you go for your financial blogging fix, then? There are some excellent sources in this arena, and we'll just deal with the top 10 here. Ready? Here we go:

1. Seeking Alpha
This finance blog is more geared towards those in the stock market more than anything. Seeking Alpha has a bevy of good writers who do their research, write intelligently and time what is written to the beat of the market every day. If "alpha" is not in your investing vocabulary, you might want to look elsewhere first and brush up on your market knowledge. After that, return to Seeking Alpha and jump in. you can even set up an "instablog" and blog yourself about the markets and such.

2. BloggingStocks
BloggingStocks features a lot more opinion and analysis than most finance blogs and the writing is top-notch. BloggingStocks covers companies throughout every industry and often features "liveblogs" where company conference calls and presentations are covered in real-time. BloggingStocks is accessible to everyone because the style is very open and not incredibly technical; and, the writing tone is very easy to follow while the information distilled and presented is done very well by the writing staff. This should be one of your personal finance bookmarks right off the top.

3. The Motley Fool
The Motley Fool has been around for quite a while and features some of the most insightful and vibrant commentary in the finance blog world. Some many not think that Tom and David Gardner's ramblings are on-spot, but more often than not they are. The Fool (as it's more commonly known) doesn't have the normal appearance of just a blog -- but the articles and commentary written there of definitely of the blog ilk. A fascinating trip every time.

4. The Simple Dollar
The Simple Dollar is written by a normal guy that seeks to educate his visitors one one thing well: how to grow your money and unclutter your personal financial life as much as possible. Great, real-life financial lessons can be found at this finance blog very regularly.

5. Wisebread
Wisebread's thoughtful commentary on using minimal resources to live as big as you'd like is always entertaining yet spot-on. If you're looking for a way to live as frugally as possible while not giving up everything (or anything), this is a must-read finance blog as frequently as you can get there.

6. Daily Finance
Daily Finance covers business news and strategy and has more of a global feel about it, but the subjects covered there should interest everyone: unemployment, market gyrations and retirement, alternative energy and technology market coverage and more.

7. 24/7 Wall Street
24/7 Wall Street has decisive commentary on the day's business news and stock market results and associated gyrations. If you're looking for no-holds-barred company commentary that incredible easy to read -- very little charts, graphs and complicated financial vocabulary is present -- 24/7 Wall Street is a great choice.

8. The Kirk Report
One of the longest-running finance blogs features a concise and well-written summary of the day's finance news every business day. There isn't a lot of fluff here -- just facts and opinion wrapped up in a package that's digestible in three to five minutes.

9. Minyanville
Wraps up daily financial news from around the planet, covering markets across the globe. Minyanville has some great original commentary as well as a great video section that's constantly updated with juicy investing and financial nuggets. Well worth a daily visit from Monday to Friday.

10. Infectious Greed
Paul Kedrosky's blog is written like a former technology trader would write -- because he is one (along with being a venture capitalist and more). Kedrosky's blog regularly features "Readings" links that have great and informative financial information. In fact, it would take many of us all day just to wrap ourselves in all the quality links this blog provides for further information. That's part of what makes Infectious Greed so valuable.