Excerpt Best Financial Site There is a giant securities warehouse club evolving on the Internet, and it's going to change the way people buy stocks and bonds. There are thousands of Web sites that deal with financial markets. Most of them provide information--quotes, analysis, predictions, and so forth. These functions were previously performed exclusively by your friendly neighborhood broker. Now you can get powerful market information on the Net, as up to date as what the brokers get, and in many cases for free. You can trade on the Net, buy initial public offerings on the Net, and all this has popped up in less than two years. The best financial-market Web site is Silicon Investor (http://www.techstocks.com). The site is the creation of Brad and Jeff Dryer, two stock-market-crazed brothers in California. Merrill Lynch is hardly shivering in its boots, but you can do a lot of things at Silicon Investor that you can't do at any broker, or any broker's Web site for that matter. Click on StockTalk, which is the heart of the site. Hundreds of long discussion threads are maintained on all sorts of topics related to technology companies and the stock market. You can read all the comments by other users or add your own. Reading the StockTalk discussions on a particular company is a great way to get some of the pros and cons on a potential investment. Ask your broker if he can supply you with an analyst's report that recommends the opposite of what he is suggesting. You'll wait a while. The thing that sets Silicon Investor apart is the accent on the user. Interactivity is everywhere. Leave your two-cents worth on one of the discussion forums. Check in with the Guru and have a laugh looking at his predictions. Add your vote to the Bull/Bear survey. Users can participate at every turn. Back to the Silicon Investor Home Page