Business Insight Zone

In the wake of yesterday’s venture into political economy, I thought it might be useful to tell you what I read when I’m looking for financial insight. My daily journeys through the business media are many, lengthy, and diverse — but here are a few sources I come back to again and again.

• Google News’s business headlines — The widest trawl I’ve found, this page makes sure that I get a sampling of U.S. and international stories from hour to hour, including the best sources around (NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg, Reuters, etc.).
• The paper version of the Wall Street Journal.
• Two Wall Street Journal blogs — Marketbeat and Deal Journal. They typically point to more in-depth stories (especially, but not exclusively, from the Journal itself), and they provide well-informed, hour-to-hour coverage leavened with considerable wit. (No subscription required, by the way.)
• How the World Works, by Andrew Leonard of Salon. Be aware that his politics lean leftward, but Leonard is an intelligent, prolific examiner of many different angles of economic globalization. (You’ll have to sit through, or skip through, an ad if you’re not a Salon subscriber.)
• Bloomberg’s energy prices page — for constant updates on oil prices throughout the day.

If it need be said, my go-to source for company financial data is Hoover’s. The historical company financial summary, in particular, is incredibly useful for getting a snapshot of a company’s financial position over time.

Where do you get your financial news? And what do you think I should be reading?

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(Photo by Alex Barth.)