Top Finance People to Follow on Twitter: Market Folly's Alpha List

Given the various "who to follow on Twitter" posts that have popped up this year, we thought we'd add a group of around 50 people we find insightful: the alpha list.  Note that this list is approached from a buyside mindset: it focuses on equity analysis, market flow, and hedge funds.  After all, Gordon Gekko once said: "the most valuable commodity I know of is information."

If you don't already, be sure to follow @MarketFolly on Twitter

Also, we've made it public so you can follow the Alpha List here


Top Finance People To Follow on Twitter: The Alpha List

In no particular order:

@HedgeFundInvest - a hedge fund manager full of insight

@PhilipEtienne - a L/S hedgie with prudent market commentary

@FirstAdopter - a trader providing original ideas, earnings call summaries & more

@TMTanalyst - a tech/media/telecom hedgie analyst with great info

@NotableCalls - great summaries of sell-side research & trading calls

@CapitalObserver - former author of our 'stock of the week' posts

@DDInvesting - distressed debt investing

@LongShortTrader - value/macro hedge fund guy

@MebFaber - CIO of Cambria Investment Management, author of World Beta

@bespokeinvest - plenty of market data & analysis

@StockJockey - name says it all

@ritholtz - author of TheBigPicture, tons of market insight

@footnoted - digging through company filings: 10K's, 10Q's and the like

@Legacy_Trades - market flow & commentary on companies

@zerohedge - you probably already follow

@AllAboutAlpha - appropriate to include on an 'alpha' list

@abnormalreturns - all the market links worth reading each day

@reformedbroker - shares market flow with humor thrown in

@StockTwits - summarizes top finance news & tweets from users

@Benzinga - tons of business news daily

@Street_Insider - continuous market news

@tradefast - tweets from a Chief Investment Officer

@researchpuzzler - resources on investment decision making

@Retail_Guru - global consumer fund manager

@MicroFundy - market and economic tweets

@djacome - equity research analyst

@StoneStAdvisors - many notable posters in this group, follow them too

@MarioGabelli - the well-known investor posts his thoughts publicly

@samgadjones - FT's hedge fund correspondent

@herbgreenberg - CNBC senior stocks commentator

@m_delamerced - NYTimes Dealbook

@TheStalwart - goes beast-mode daily covering financial news

@Alphal_pha - PM on a long/short equity fund

@ericjackson - Ironfire Capital manager & activist investor

@John_Hempton - Bronte Capital manager & short-selling specialist

@BergenCapital - hedge fund manager

@fundmyfund - Paladin Long Short manager

@mojoris1977 - special situations / event-driven focus

@BarbarianCap - fund analyst

@VolSlinger - hf manager

@savitz - Forbes SF bureau chief 

@TechStockRadar - more great tech insights

@jennablan - editor of US investment strategy @ Reuters

@Blueshiftideas - research boutique to institutions & hedgies

@vitaliyk - value investor & author

@valuepicker - value investor

@Greg_Speicher - investing educator & value investor

@asifsuria - merger arbitrage related news

@JackSchwager - author of the Market Wizards books

@DanZanger - famous swing trader

@OptionsHawk - technical analysis & trading ideas

@slopeofhope - trader, tweets on technical analysis

@cperruna - tweets on investing & technical analysis

@charlesrotblut - AAII sentiment updates & more

@calculatedrisk - your stop for housing market info


And as a bonus, we'll also mention @DavidEin - David Einhorn. Yes, that one. He was posting his World Series of Poker updates. It's extremely doubtful he'll post market material, though.  Also, @Dasan seems to have disappeared from Twitter, but if he ever comes back he'd be on this list.



P.S. - Are you a hedgie/PM/analyst on Twitter? Send us an "@" reply to let us know as we've surely missed following many insightful others! You can follow @MarketFolly on Twitter here.

MarketFolly's Facebook Page

Facebook

Yes, we finally got around to it and now have a Facebook Page. Look at us go, we are soooo up to speed on this whole social media game. No, but seriously, 'become a fan/friend us' on Facebook. It would mean a lot since we don't have anyone right now haha. We definitely want readers to utilize the discussion board on our Facebook page. Create discussions, post up comments/market links on the wall, etc. We'll be checking/posting on it daily.

Twitter

Staying on social media, make sure you follow us on Twitter too. We'll be posting up additional market thoughts/insight there.


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Have a good weekend!

Follow Market Folly on Twitter and StockTwits

Just wanted to take a second and let everyone know that we here at Market Folly have been posting over at Twitter and StockTwits for some time now and if you aren't already, you should definitely follow our posts there. Why? Because we post up our portfolio activity there, as well as unique market insight that is not featured here on the blog. (Cliff's Notes on how to follow us listed at the bottom of this post).


What is Twitter?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

It is essentially a mini-blog where you post messages that are 140 characters in length. Think of it as blogging meets texting meets facebook status updates meets instant messenger. You can post up your thoughts, converse with people, and "follow" each others posts by clicking the follow button on their page. Here is Market Folly's Twitter page: Follow Us! (And, if you haven't noticed, our Twitter updates are posted on the right-side column of the blog as well). In order to follow us, all you have to do is sign-up for Twitter for free. And, there's also another reason to sign-up for Twitter.

What is StockTwits?

StockTwits is an application linked to Twitter specifically geared for those interested in trading, investing, and markets. (Check out the WSJ press coverage & the 'how to' guide). Basically, a huge community has sprouted up on Twitter that talks about all things financial markets. Stocktwits is where this happens. Included in this community are well known traders/investors like Doug Kass, Eric Bolling, James Altucher, Paul Kedrosky, Howard Lindzon, and many more. There's also a large amount of prominent financial bloggers on there as well. Simply put, its an awesome community full of knowledgeable and helpful people.

In order to participate, just sign up for Twitter and make sure you "follow" @StockTwits and @marketfolly. Fill in your bio and add a picture so we can get an idea of who you are or how you trade/invest. After you've signed up, go to StockTwits and log in with your information. Poke around and take it all in so you can see how everything works. There's some great tutorials on their site and blog. Then, when you're ready, start to interact and contribute.

There's two ways to participate in the market talk. First, if you're talking about an individual company/ticker, just preface the ticker with a '$' sign. For instance, AAPL becomes $AAPL. This ensures your message is picked up by the community. If you just have general market commentary without a specific ticker, add a '$$' to the very beginning or the very end of your message. For instance: $$ The banking system is insolvent. Or: The market is doomed $$. Note that if you mention a ticker prefaced by the '$' in your post, you don't need to use the $$. You can also talk about futures and forex, and that info is covered on the StockTwits blog.

The easiest way to learn is to observe for a little bit and then to jump right in, as people will help you along the way. If you're confused, you can read some of the articles we've linked to below which help to explain everything.

In the end, there's really only 3 steps:

1. Sign up for Twitter
2. Follow @marketfolly & @StockTwits
3. Log in at StockTwits and poke around to learn.

We'll be posting a follow-up with some more specifics on how you can really utilize Twitter and StockTwits. If you have any questions at all, feel free to email us (marketfolly at gmail dot com) and we'll help you get started out. Now, hurry up and find out what you've been missing out on!

Helpful articles:
- StockTwits 'How to' Guide
- Wall Street Journal article on StockTwits
- MSN Money / Twitter's New Status: Investing Tool
- Macro talk on StockTwits