Leaders of the New School, Revisited

I’m either lucky or I have impeccable taste in financial bloggers 🙂

Last May I came up with three new blogs to watch and then last August I did a post called Leaders of the New School to highlight a few others.  I’m proud to say that I’ve picked some serious breakout sites in retrospect.

Let’s do a Where Are They Now to catch up with the bloggers I told you would be big last year…

i heart Wall Street – This is my pal Scott’s website, really it’s his baby.  He’s been dying to get this blog going and when I mentioned it last summer, it was really just one of several side projects of his.  And then it’s like a switch was flicked on and I heart Wall Street just came alive.  Post after post – triples and home runs.  Scott knows the ins and outs of the wealth management game and he sees three steps ahead in terms of how technology and finance are converging.  And he’s funny as hell, check this piece out on Branch Managers.

ChessNWine – I picked ChessNWine of iBankCoin as THE breakout star for 2010 and man did I nail it.  His combination of daily actionable stock setups and aggressive humor have made him a daily read for me and for plenty of others.  Here’s Chess taking my nat gas trucking thesis and breaking down each stock involved in the play.

Stone Street Advisors – I’m starting to see a lot more Stone Street on the Abnormal Returns daily linkfest.  As I predicted, The Analyst’s site has really begun gaining traction lately, solid rants like this one on f***ed up Chinese reverse mergers have taken SSA to the next level.

Dynamic Hedge – As you guys know, not a day goes by where I don’t have something to say, not all of it terribly brilliant or insightful but I certainly try.  So what do we think about a guy who has something genius to say 5 days a week, someone who consistently cuts to the chase and singles out some of the most elemental factors driving the market at every turn?  Dynamic Hedge is like some kind of freak in that regard, so important as a blogger that I made him one of only three contributors to the Mixtape section of TRB.

Chicago Sean – Sean has come a long way from that Fisher Price My First Trading Blog he had going on last summer.  He is now not only blogging on the StockTwits network but he has also become the full time community manager.  Sean works his ass off keeping our stream free of spaminess, trolling, nasty comments and negative energy.  Without his efforts we’d be back on the Raging Bull message boards fighting over race, religion and 9/11 conspiracy theories.  Bravo Sean, stay Minimalist.

Leigh Drogen – Leigh’s become a friend of mine over the past year and his blogging has gotten a lot broader and more worldly.  He is currently working on a very cool, potentially disruptive social media project that will let regular people come up with their own estimates versus just the same old professionals who seem to miss everything these days (Wall Street’s sell-side missed Intel’s last quarterly sales number by $1 billion dollars!).  Check out Leigh’s startup here:  Estimize

Weakonomics – The Weakonomist is doing his thing, and his thing is very often the hilarious debunking of ridiculous, non-factual musings of others in matters economic.  He’s also very good at explaining complex topics in an easily digestible format, see 10 Things You Need to Know About the Debt Ceiling for an example.

Hedgeye Blog – If you didn’t know who Keith McCullough was last summer when I first highlighted the Hedgeye Blog, you certainly do now.  You can find McCullough most days on CNBC where he is a regular contributor or on the stream tweeting apoplectically about the latest Treasury and Fed shenanigans.  Keith’s morning missives at the Hedgeye Blog are always well-written and never wishy-washy, witness this piece about there being too many hedge funds and too much currency.

Next week I’m doing my 2011 Leaders of the New School.  Tune in and let’s see if I can predict the next round of big finance bloggers.