Blogging in the finance industry is a highly competitive enterprise. The very nature of the capital markets draws confident, opinionated people with healthy egos to them. It can become cutthroat at times. As the old saying goes, “Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan.” Believe me when I tell you, there are plenty of alleged fathers and mothers to the success iBankCoin, The PPT, and 12631 have had in recent years. At the end of the day, though, iBC’s success is due to The Fly, Jeremy, the strong team we have assembled, but most of all our loyal readers and subscribers.
Outside of iBankCoin, Downtown Josh Brown @ReformedBroker), Tadas over at AbnornalReturns.com. @GYSC16, Derek Hernquist, J.C. Parets, @TraderStewie, @ChicagoSean, etc. have all been great to me in terms of linking to my work. There are definitely good guys in this business.
With that in mind, I am honored to be #5 on Gavin McMaster ‘s (@OptiontradinIQ) very strong list of his Top 25 Traders on Twitter to follow. His list is spreading quickly through the internet, as I have received an additional 200 Twitter followers over the past twenty four hours.
I’ll take the acclaim when I can get it. Thanks, Gavin.
_____________________________
1 – Howard Lindzon – 222,468 Followers –@howardlindzon
The Grand Daddy of them all. A rock star entrepreneur, Howard Lindzon has crushed everything in his wake, and seemingly anything he touches turns to gold. He is perhaps best know as the CEO and Co-founder of Stocktwits, which was ranked as one of the top 50 websites of 2010 byTIME magazine. If that isn’t enough, he has also managed a hedge fund since June 1998 and is a GP of Social Leverage. In October 2006, he created Wallstrip, a daily business satire news video podcast that was bought out by CBS in May 2007. He has also authored two books, The Wallstrip Edge and The StockTwits edge and made seed investments in numerous successful online ventures.
2 – Brian Shannon – 43,718 Followers – @alphatrends
Unlucky not to get the number 1 spot. Brian is someone I have admired and followed for a long time, even before I started using twitter. AlphaTrends.net just celebrated it’s 6th year and in that time Brian has helped countless traders. Brian is by far and away THE BEST technical analyst on the web and is the author of Technical Analysis in Multiple Timeframes. He provides a free market update video once or twice per week which is one I try and watch every time. His YouTubechannel has over 3 million views and 9,600 Subscribers. Despite his rather hideous twitter background (sorry Brian), he is a must follow for every trader.
3 – Paul Kedrosky – 208,692 Followers – @pkedrosky
Rounding out the top 3 is Dr. Paul Kedrosky. With a Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario, an M.B.A. from Queen’s University, and a B. Engineering from Carleton University, you know this is one smart guy. His is the author of Infectious Greed, one of the most popular business blogs and he has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Harvard Business Review, CNN, PBS Newshour, ABC Nightline, and the New York Times, CNBC, and Bloomberg. Dr, Kedrosky is a Senior Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation and is has been very successful as a seed investor in numerous ventures. Paul is the most active on the list with nearly 55,000 tweets.
4 – Steve Grasso – 12,101 Followers – @grassosteve
Steve Grasso started his career in 1993 with Bear Sterns working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1999 he then move to Stuart Frankel & Co. where he is currently the Director of International Sales. Steve is very active on twitter and posts market commentary numerous times throughout the day. A well known and popular personality on the NYSE floor, this CNBC Fast Money regular also stars in the hit AMC show Mad Men in his spare time (see picture). Out of this list probably the person I would most like to meet as he just seems like a bit of a dude.
5 – ChessNwine – 7,100 Followers – @chessNwine
ChessNwine is a full time trader and market commentator who is very active on twitter and on hisibankcoin blog. With his insightful market commentary and daily video analysis, it’s not hard to see why he has a very loyal following. Out of his 29 reviews on Investimonials, 24 of those are 5 star which says a lot.
6 – J.C. Parets – 2,858 Followers – @allstarcharts
J.C. Parets is a Miami native now based in New York who manages money for high net-worth investors, corporations, retirement plans and charitable foundations. He is a Chartered Market Technician and is one of the best technical analysts going around. J.C. Started his All Star Chartsblog in March 2011. He’s a big baseball fan and was apparently a pretty mean pitcher in his day.
7 – Ryan Baird – 7,077 Followers – @FOCUS_ON_RISK
Ryan Baird is professional derivative trader who is hugely popular on twitter and provides loads of market commentary and advice. What I like best about Ryan are the tips he gives under the hash tag #complacencykills. He’s big into his music and is a super smart guy with interests ranging from economics to psychology, philosophy, astronomy, minimalism, and nutrition. What I like best about Ryan are the tips he gives under the hash tag #complacencykills. Here are some pearls of wisdom from Ryan:
Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.
What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.
8 – Downtown Josh Brown – 21,058 Followers –@reformedbroker
Josh Brown is a New Yrok based investment advisor with Fusion Analytics. He runs The Reformed Broker blog, an entertaining read with regular market commentary and political and economic satire. Josh authored the book, Backstage Wall Street, and is also a regular contributor to Forbes, CNNMoney, Fortune and CNBC. He also created Things Apple is Worth More Than, which started as a joke but then went viral. You should definitely check out his Best of The Reformed Broker page, I particularly enjoyed this post, just shows what you can accomplish with a little motivation.
9 – Greg Harmon – 6,474 Followers – @harmongreg
Greg Harmon is the founder of Dragonfly Capital and with 30 years’ experience in the markets, you can be sure he knows what he’s talking about. If that wasn’t enough to convince you, he also has an MBA in Finance from NYU Stern School of Business and BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University as well as being a CMT and a CFA. Wow! He has held senior positions including Head of Global Trading, Head of Product Development, Head of Strategy and Director of Equity and Portfolio Swaps Trading at Chase Manhattan, State Street Corporation and BNP Paribas. Greg is hugely active on Twitter with almost 40,000 tweets and often posts dozens of chart reviews on for weekend readers.
10 – Barry Ritholtz – 19,610 Followers – @ritholtz
Barry Ritholtz started The Picture Blog in 2003 and has developed a huge following since and earned rave reviews from the financial media. His tweets contain a variety of witty, sarcastic and extremely educational information and he has a knack for simplifying complex ideas so that the average Joe can understand them. A great person to follow if you want to see through all the noise and get a big picture view. Leads the pack in terms of his analysis, instead of just following the latest trend like most others. With nearly 20,000 followers and 18,000 tweets he a great trader to round out the top 10.
11 – Darren Miller – 4,613 Followers – @attitrade
A former psychologist who is now helping traders succeed in the markets through the use of psychometrics and applying the Market Awareness Profile he developed. This process asks traders, questions like, “Where are you now?”, “Where do you want to be?” and “How are you going to get there?”. Darren is also a trader himself who focusses on options selling strategies, particularly in SPX.
12 – Anne Marie – 9,031 Followers – @AnneMarieTrades
Another fantastic trader with years of experience and also the author of The Trading Book. Anne Marie provides excellent analysis of key support and resistance lines for the main indices and major stocks. The thing I lave about Anne Marie is that she keeps it real. Here is an extract from her book.
“Just tell me where to buy and sell.” As both an educator and market moderator, I have discovered this is the most common mindset of the novice retail trader entering the market, lured by the promise of 1,000% returns. The truth is trading is a tough business…
13 – Kirk Nathaniel – 10,357 Followers – @optionalpha
Kirk from Option Alpha is one of the top bloggers in the options trading space and is someone I really admire. He posts regularly articles on his blog, and while he tends to be more active onFacebook than on Twitter, he is definitely someone worth checking out. He has come a long way since he founded The Option Writer back in 2008. His insights have really helped me become a better trader. Option Alpha is a one stop shop for all your option trading education with loads of great resources. Don’t forget to check out his You Tube Channel which has over 180 videos that have had over 100,000 views.
14 – Jim Cramer – 494,636 Followers – @jimcramer
Love him or hate him, he has to make it based on sheer weight of numbers with an incredible 494,636 followers. Jim Cramer is the super famous host of CNBC’s Mad Money and the author of numerous books. Jim initially made his mark as a hedge fund manager and boasted an impressive compounded rate of return of 24% after all fees for 15 years. What you may not know about him however is that he is also a member of the New York Bar and attended Harvard Law School. Way to go Jim, boo yah!
15 – Peter Brandt – 7,168 Followers – @PeterLBrandt
Peter Brandt is a commodity trader with over 30 years experience. Just think about that for a minute, and imagine how much you could learn from this guy. He is a leader in the field of technical analysis and although his views are sometimes a little controversial, it’s hard to argue with his track record. Peter focusing mostly on commodities, but also provides regular analysis of major indices and stocks. He is the author of Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader andTrading Commodity Futures with Classical Chart Patterns. With a proprietary annual rate of return of 41.6%, this is one guy you should be learning as much as you can from.
16 – Pete Najarian – 24,574 Followers – @petenajarian
Pete Najarian is a regular on CNBC’s Fast Money, but in a prior life he was a linebacker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Minnesota Vikings. Along with his brother Jon, he founded OptionMONSTER and also the online brokerage firm TradeMONSTER. Sported a superbmullet back in the day. Out of all the traders on this list, probably the guy I would most want to have a beer with, I reckon he would have some entertaining stories.
17 – Derald Muniz – 3,299 Followers – @1nvestor
Derald Muniz is hugely active on twitter with over 33,000 tweets and an average of 34 tweets per day. On his blog deraldmuniz.com he provides a lot of discussion on chart patterns of various stocks and trading methodologies. Maintains a portfolio of his “Fab 5″ which seems to perform very well.
18 – Vadar – 3,921 Followers – @vader7x
Full time futures, options and currency trader who provides regular posts with market insights and the occasional bit if humor. Often trades the index futures after hours. Avid sports fan who enjoys golf and college basketball. Like a lot of traders, he also loves to make fun of Doug Kass.
19 – Joey Fundora – 7,091 Followers – @downtowntrader
Joey Fundora has been a private trader for the last 8 years and is based in South Florida and is primarily an equities trader although he does trade some options, and his usual holding period is 1-5 days. He like to use 9, 20 and 50 day simple moving averages to analyze stocks and doesn’t try to pick tops or bottoms. He has a strong focus on risk management and likes to keep his open positions below 10 in order to keep a good handle on his portfolio. Joey is a bit of a card shark so watch out, he founded and hosts an annual poker tournament for charity in conjunction with Stocktwits.
20 – Robert Sinn – 6,621 Followers – @stocksage1
Robert Sinn is a professional trader and macroeconomic/market analyst. Another guy on this list that is ultra intelligent as he is an internationally rated chess master who holds the titles of National Master and Life Master, he is also a former U.S. Junior National Champion and Florida State Champion. Wowser… Robert is another trader who is very active on twitter with over 25,000 tweets.
21 – Madison Montana – 2,926 Followers – @tlmontana
Madison Montana is hugely active on twitter and provides a lot of actionable market commentary. She also regularly tweets out economic or market analysis articles that may be of interest to her followers. Madison runs a popular subscriber chat room MadiEyeOnSpy’s focusing on SPY levels as well as earnings stock setups and when viable longer swings in stocks like GOOG, AMZN, LULU, GRPN and of course AAPL! She’s a BIG NY Rangers fan and not a bad looking gal too.
22 – Andrew Keene – 10,601 Followers –@KeeneOnTheMarket
Andrew Keene is a well known personality on the street and a regular on CNBC and Bloomberg TV. He regularly posts options trading ideas and follows up on the trade management of those positions. He is an independent trader who at one point was the largest independent on the floor trader of AAPL options. Andrew operates a live trading room and also releases a very popular “Unusual Options Activity” report. He also posts a Daily Market Update on YouTube, check out anexample here.
23 – Phil Pearlman – 10,409 Followers – @ppearlman
Phil Pearlman is the executive editor of StockTwits and an investor in the company. In fact, he is good friends with Howard Lindzon and was one of the first investors in StockTwits. Previously, he managed a long/short equity hedge fund which focused on behavioral strategies. Phil earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from Argosy University and is another super smart guy, but also incredibly humble. You will not see a bad word written about Phil anywhere. He’s very active on twitter and seems to respond to every single person who asks him a question. Great guy.
24 – Bespoke – 12,609 Followers – @bespokeinvest
Bespoke Investment Group LLC was formed in May 2007 by Paul Hickey and Justin Walters. Bespoke provides some of the best economic and market commentary. Here’s what Paul Kedrosky, the number 3 trader on this list has to say:
“Bespoke’s insights have consistently surprised me and made me money, and there is no higher praise than that in the world of commericalized financial research.”
25 – Juan Doe – 2,958 Followers – @fibline
Who is Juan Doe? Nobody truly knows, and that just adds to the mystery of this pro trader. He posts on average 756 times per day, but that’s ok, because he provides great analysis and gets you thinking. Trades currencies as well as stocks.
If you feel like I’ve missed anyone off this list, please leave a comment below and if you enjoyed this list, please share it on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.
Don’t forget to sign up to the IQ Newsletter to receive a free copy of my personal trading plan and options strategy workbook.
i have been diagnosed with:
scolionophobia
Nice job.
congrats buddy!
Thanks, guys!
well deserved