Become a Better Investor’s Top 5 Bloggers 2016
Become a Better Investor’s Top 5 Bloggers 2016 is our list of the five most noteworthy investment bloggers this year from around the world. We began publishing in January, with our first ever post breaking ground as Top 5 of the Week of January 18.
As of November 18th, we have published 44 Top 5 of the Week posts and featured 130+ investment bloggers. That adds up to 220 investment articles summarized in exactly 694 bullet points. Phew!
Top 5 of the Week is a summarized collection of financial investment articles that we like and think you might like too. As this Become a Better Investor’s Top 5 Bloggers 2016 list shows, there are some truly excellent writers out there that can help you on your financial journey to Become a Better Investor. Whether you’re a novice investor just starting with your first ETF or a veteran who has weathered your fair share of market crashes, we’ve uncovered articles for everyone.
When analyzing the statistics, we discovered that our selected Become a Better Investor’s Top 5 Bloggers 2016 accounted for 22.2% of the 694 bullet points we’ve written in 220 investment article summaries.
See our ranking below of the five bloggers out of 130+ summarized in our Top 5 of the Week that featured the most in 2016 for total bullet points published. You’ll also get our favorite takeaways from these prominent investment authors.
Spread some financial knowledge and happiness by congratulating them all!
It’s no harder than clicking on a share button in the images or by hitting the “Tweet This” for each blogger below. 
4. The Reformed Broker Josh Brown
Share of total bullet points: 3.2%
Blog: The Reformed Broker
No, it’s not a typo, the first two bloggers we showcase tied with 3.2%.
CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, Joshua is well renowned in the investment blogging world. Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal and TIME Magazine has ranked Josh as the number one finance guy to follow on social media. He has also written the popular books Backstage Wall Street and Clash of the Financial Pundits.
Our Top 5 Takeaways from Josh in 2016:
- Beware of ‘financial advisors’ coming out of the woodworks in your various social circles—they do not have your financial interests at heart; only theirs (Read Full Article)
- Good financial advisors are here to save us, as investors, from ourselves; safeguarding us—their clients—from making misguided emotional decisions that may risk millions (Read Full Article)
- Complex investing should hold no appeal when simplicity is as successful—but it requires mental strength to avoid the allure of a more ‘sophisticated process’ (Read Full Article)
- We’re unsatisfied with our personal returns; instead, we envy others’ stock performances or experience FOMO (the fear of missing out) (Read Full Article)
- While prices show an accurate account of what’s going on it’s not nearly as interesting to the media as speculating over the causes as that’s more opinion based (Read Full Article)
Congratulate Josh with a tweet!
4. The Irrelevant Investor Michael Batnick
Share of total bullet points: 3.2%
Blog: The Irrelevant Investor
Michael Batnick, CFA is Director of Research at Ritholtz Wealth Management and even though his blog is called The Irrelevant Investor, he is anything but irrelevant in his contribution to investment blogging.
Our Top 5 Takeaways from Michael in 2016:
- As Benjamin Disraeli—Prime minister of the United Kingdom (twice)—once said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” (Read Full Article)
- Don’t give up on your strategy even if it’s unpopular to others and riskier bets seem more exciting (Read Full Article)
- If you consider technical analysis as a useful tool for evaluating risk rather than an attempt to predict the future, it can work favorably for you as an investor (Read Full Article)
- Take heart that GDP has little correlation with stock market returns—only 10% of GDP is made up by what pushes stocks; earnings (Read Full Article)
- Annual returns chart for the S&P 500 shows the return has only been close to the ‘average’ three times in 90 years, so don’t base short-term expectations on long-term past averages (Read Full Article)
Congratulate Michael with a tweet!
3. Vintage Value Investing with John Szramiak
Share of total bullet points: 3.9%
Blog: Vintage Value Investing
John Szramiak runs Vintage Value Investing where he has thoughtfully laid out his explanation for why value investing is vintage. Even though we aren’t hardcore value investors we enjoy John’s posts delving into the teachings of the greatest value investors, such as Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger.
Our Top 5 Takeaways from John in 2016:
- “Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things,” think slow and steady for greater long-term wealth (Read Full Article)
- Despite 70% of the Earth’s surface covered in water, a mere 2.5% of that is freshwater andy only 0.007% is easily accessible to support the global population of 7 billion people (Read Full Article)
- As Buffet puts it, “When you build a bridge, you insist it can carry 30,000 pounds, but you only drive 10,000-pound trucks across it. And that same principle works in investing.” (Read Full Article)
- Narrow framing; investors make shortsighted decisions and don’t consider the context of their entire portfolio (Read Full Article)
- If investors act upon share price forecasts, they can drive the value up in an entirely different manner making the original forecast null and void—a self-defeating prophecy (Read Full Article)
Congratulate John with a tweet!
2. The Collaborative Fool Morgan Housel
Share of total bullet points: 5.2%
Blog: The Collaborative Fund
Morgan Housel is a partner at The Collaborative Fund. We began to share many of his posts while he was writing for The Motley Fool (hence why we call him a “fool” in the title 
) and we like his pragmatic investing ideas and engaging style of writing.
Our Top 5 Takeaways from Morgan in 2016:
- Investing in stocks is a game of probability even if the odds look good you may lose, and yet, still turn a profit (Read Full Article)
- It is worth bearing in mind “more money has been lost preparing for bear markets than in actual bear markets” (Read Full Article)
- Trying to spot bubbles is too difficult for the average investor, as only hindsight allows us to see them accurately (Read Full Article)
- Understand the difference between a contrarian and a cynical stance; one is choosing not to go with the crowd, the other is always believing the crowd is wrong (Read Full Article)
- True brilliance is conveying challenging ideas in the simplest manner (Read Full Article)
Congratulate Morgan with a tweet!
1. A Wealth of Common Sense from Ben Carlson
Share of total bullet points: 6.8%
Blog: A Wealth of Common Sense
Ben Carlson, CFA is the Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. He is maybe more famous (at least to us) for his blog A Wealth of Common Sense and his book A Wealth of Common Sense: Why Simplicity Trumps Complexity in Any Investment Plan. We like Ben’s writing as it’s no-nonsense; it’s actually a lot of common sense. 
Did you note that Ben is the third guy on the list that works at Ritholtz Wealth Management? In fact, if we include Barry Ritholtz and Tony Isola, the Ritholtz Boys accounted for a whopping 18.2% of our total bullet points in 2016.
Our Top 5 Takeaways from Ben in 2016:
- With information in vast supply nowadays you have to be extra smart and examine beyond the surface of evidential data (Read Full Article)
- Charlatans will change the rules if their performance isn’t up to scratch and alter their strategies, maybe after a time of underperformance—increasing risk to your portfolio, rather than mitigating it (Read Full Article)
- Overconfidence and ‘smarts’ can be a dangerous combination for investing (Read Full Article)
- Whatever your political stance you should never let politics weigh in on your financial decisions (Read Full Article)
- Time is the best investment you can spend money on; your family is the most important asset you have (Read Full Article)
Congratulate Ben with a tweet!
DISCLAIMER: This content is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Readers should not consider statements made by the author(s) as formal recommendations and should consult their financial advisor before making any investment decisions. While the information provided is believed to be accurate, it may include errors or inaccuracies. The author(s) cannot be held liable for any actions taken as a result of reading this article. The Become a Better Investor Team doesn’t necessarily endorse any stocks or shares mentioned in the articles or the author of such articles linked to and summarized in Top 5 of the Week and cannot guarantee the accuracy of its information.