Free Resources

There are a lot of free resources available for traders and investors. Perhaps too many. We definitely live in a noisy, information-dominant world. As a result, the mediocre and average tends to drown out the high quality and excellent.

Rather than adding to the noise, I've decided to keep this page deliberately short. I'm listing only those free resources which are truly free and which I believe to be truly superior. I also intend to be very selective about what I add to this list in the future.

Not all the resources listed below are directly related to options or option trading strategies, and some you are no doubt already aware of. Nevertheless, directly or indirectly, the following collection does, in my opinion, offer real value for people serious about trading and investing.

List of Free Resources for Traders and Investors

Please note: all links will open in a new window . . .

Warren Buffett's Annual Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letters
There have been countless books and articles written about Warren Buffett, everyone's favorite (and most successful) value investor, but there's been very little written by him. These archived shareholder letters comprise the bulk of Buffett's own public writings. Going all the way back to 1977, they contain Buffett's distilled investing wisdom. Written with great clarity, insight, and humor, they're a value investing course all in themselves and are every bit as important as Benjamin Graham's value investing classic, The Intelligent Investor.

PBS Nightly Business Report Streaming Videos
I tend to start feeling ill after prolonged exposure to CNBC and other cable business news channels. The endless stream of three minute inteviews (Sorry to interrupt but we have another three minute interview to go to now) creates a noisy and superficial experience. I'm a long time fan of PBS's more indepth and substantive Nightly Business Report. They have a brand new website (as of December 2011?) where you can watch the recent streaming videos of their nightly broadcasts. With two other people in the house competing for the television at 5:30 pm local time (and one of them a child), I tend to view NBR mostly online.

Charlie Rose Streaming Videos
Charlie Rose is a national treasure. His nightly hour of substantive interviews of figures from the worlds of politics, business, the arts, culture, and academia is unrivaled by anything else on television or in print. Those inteviews are now all available in streaming video format. Although Charlie Rose covers a wide variety of subjects, interviews from the world of business, economy, and investing are well represented.

John Mauldin's Thoughts from the Frontline Weekly e-Letter
One of the truly great free resources for investors, John Mauldin's weekly e-letter is a substantive weekly commentary on the state of the economy and long term investment issues. John Mauldin is a best selling author, widely acclaimed financial speaker, and has appeared on numerous financial television and radio programs. His weekly e-letter is not about stock picking or investment recommendations but rather indepth discussions about underlying economic issues. There are currently more than one million subscribers. If you're not one already, you should really consider becoming one.

Investment Strategy by Jeffrey Saut (Raymond James)
Jeffrey Saut is one of my favorite market commentators. His commentary is highly relevant, accurate, and entertaining. Whenever I see him on Nightly Business Report or CNBC, I stop what I'm doing and give him my undivided attention. The web source here is an indepth weekly commentary posted on the first trading day of each week. Be sure to check out the daily audio commentary as well (available by mid-day, up to four days a week).

Joseph L. Shaefer's Articles on Seeking Alpha
Joseph L. Shaefer runs Stanford Wealth Management and is the editor of Investor's Edge. He also has an impressive military and personal biography. I find Mr. Shaefer's articles to be some of the best material published on Seeking Alpha - well researched, cogent, entertaining, engaging, and above all, incredibly articulate. If you have a registered account with Seeking Alpha (also free) you can subscribe to Mr. Shaefer's articles via the link above and be notified by email whenever a new one is available.

Chuck Carnevale's Articles on Seeking Alpha
Chuck Carnevale is another Seeking Alpha contributor that I admire very much. Like Joseph Shaefer above, he too has an impressive military and personal biography. He is the creator of F.A.S.T. Graphs (Fundamentals Analyzer Software Tools), a powerful fundamentally driven graphing software that really illustrates the correlation between earnings and share price over the long term and, as a result, can help you see in an instant whether a company is overvalued or undervalued.

Wall Street Journal's Market Data - Dividends
Good source of current dividend news, information, and schedules. This page is updated daily.