Do there exist any wikipedia type sites for evaluating financial service providers?
It is always a good idea if you are worried about customer service and hidden gotchas to visit http://getsatisfaction.com - they operate as an independent complaint board for many companies. http://getsatisfaction.com/bankofamerica for example alerts you to many problems with using BofA. In addition, googling for common complaint terms is a great idea.  It's easy to learn why bank of america sucks and to see that not too many people think bank of america rocks. "Excellent question.  I'm not aware of one. I was going to say ""go visit some personal finance blogs"" but then I remembered that I write on one, and that I often get a commission if I talk about online accounts, so unless something is really bad I'm not going to post on it because I want to make money, not chase it away. This isn't to say that I'm biased by commissions, but among a bunch of online banks paying pretty much the same (crappy) interest rate and giving pretty much the same (often not crappy) service, I'm going to give air time to the ones that pay the best commissions.  That, and some of the affiliate programs would kick me out if I trashed them on my blog. This also would taint any site, blog or not, that does not explicitly say that they do not have affiliate relationships with the banks they review. I suppose if you read enough blogs you can figure out the bad ones by their absence, but that takes a lot of time.  Seems like you'd do all right by doing a ""--bank name-- sucks"" Google search to dig up the dirt. That, or call up / e-mail / post on their forum any questions you have about their services before sending them your money.  If they're up front, they'll answer you."
I am very familiar with the Bloomberg terminal service and agree that their info on securities &amp; markets, especially fixed income, is unparalleled.  However, their news and editorial departments espouse the viewpoints of Michael Bloomberg such as being permabullish in the face of data, pro gun control, pro immigration (legal+illegal), pro Israel, and pro Sunni monarchies (Saudi et al). Good thing I'm not at Freddie anymore.  Not sure what I would have picked (They don't use quite the same analyst/VP/Director framework, VP there is like MD elsewhere).  Not sure what someone at the Fed or Treasury would put either, or the rating agencies, or Reuters or Bloomberg.  Before Freddie, I was working for a financial software provider.  Gonna be hard to be inclusive with that list.  And frankly, VP - IB doesn't even tell you much.  I'd much rather know what sector everyone worked. The Khan Academy has a huge series on finance (Sal Khan used to work at a hedge fund before he started his magnum opus): http://www.khanacademy.org/#core-finance  Some are pretty basic stuff, but he does have some interesting commentary and snippets of more interesting topics. They're all very low-commitment and bite-sized. Bloomberg Professional seems to be very popular. It provides any kind of data you can imagine. Analysis is a subjective interpretation of the data. GnuCash—Great for the meticulous who want to know every detail of their finances. Pros: Cons: Is there one out there that doesn't suffer from massive survivorship bias? Most that I've looked at gather their data from discretionary reporting from the manager themselves, and many stop reporting after bad months when they aren't going to be raising capital anyway. Mint.com—Easy solution to provide insight into finances. Pros: Cons: I've got a small position at Lending Club and it's doing really well. It's been easy to use, good (not excellent) interface, easy to track the loans you've made &amp; does a good job with notifications. Not much there for doing anything advanced with the portfolio math--I've used a separate spreadsheet to track things *as well as* use their reporting.    The one catch with them I find is that when you put an order in you have to wait longer than you might expect for the process to complete--that is, even after the loan is *funded*, it still has to be *reviewed*, so the lead time before your money begins earning interest might be 2 weeks + 1 week of review time. I'm not familiar enough with finance in any capacity to know what the difference is between financial services or a finance department (beyond what you said); my familiarity of the industry extends to trading, rating, and financial law enforcement. But at a glance on mobile, that looks like pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I have no connect to the industry, but habe been on a Wall St media binge lately, and like to understand powerful/influencial sectors of society anyways. Thanks. You should check out existing resources like Investopedia for definitions, and ask questions if there is something you do not understand, instead of asking folks to spit out definitions. A good book for you to read might be Wall Street Words Morningstar has that 10 history at http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=JNJ&region=usa&culture=en-US No career advice or homework help (unless your homework is some kind of big project and you need an explanation on a concept).   I want to see financial news, legislation concerning the markets and regulation, self posts about financial concepts, opinion articles about finance from reputable sources, etc. They are almost always behind paywalls. The analysts that write these reports need to get paid somehow.  I'd search for reports on google by specific topic and see what you find, but no where is there a treasure trove of free information Here is a list of threads in other subreddits about the same content:   * [IMF:Debt Sustainability Analyses for Low-Income Countries: An Assessment of Projection Performance(PDF)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/79qemw/imfdebt_sustainability_analyses_for_lowincome/) on /r/Economics with 7 karma (created at 2017-10-31 04:16:16 by /u/mberre)  ----   ^^I ^^am ^^a ^^bot  ^^[FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/wiki/index)-[Code](https://github.com/PokestarFan/DuplicateBot)-[Bugs](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/comments/6ypgmx/bugs_and_problems/)-[Suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/comments/6ypg85/suggestion_for_duplicatesbot/)-[Block](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/wiki/index#wiki_block_bot_from_tagging_on_your_posts)  ^^Now ^^you ^^can ^^remove ^^the ^^comment ^^by ^^replying ^^delete! "Strategy would be my top factor.  While this may be implied, I do think it helps to have an idea of what is causing the buy and sell signals in speculating as I'd rather follow a strategy than try to figure things out completely from scratch that doesn't quite make sense to me. There are generally a couple of different schools of analysis that may be worth passing along: Fundamental Analysis:Fundamental analysis of a business involves analyzing its financial statements and health, its management and competitive advantages, and its competitors and markets. When applied to futures and forex, it focuses on the overall state of the economy, interest rates, production, earnings, and management. When analyzing a stock, futures contract, or currency using fundamental analysis there are two basic approaches one can use; bottom up analysis and top down analysis. The term is used to distinguish such analysis from other types of investment analysis, such as quantitative analysis and technical analysis. Technical Analysis:In finance, technical analysis is a security analysis methodology for forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. Behavioral economics and quantitative analysis use many of the same tools of technical analysis, which, being an aspect of active management, stands in contradiction to much of modern portfolio theory. The efficacy of both technical and fundamental analysis is disputed by the efficient-market hypothesis which states that stock market prices are essentially unpredictable. There are tools like ""Stock Screeners"" that will let you filter based on various criteria to use each analysis in a mix.  There are various strategies one could use.  Wikipedia under Stock Speculator lists: ""Several different types of stock trading strategies or approaches exist including day trading, trend following, market making, scalping (trading), momentum trading, trading the news, and arbitrage.""  Thus, I'd advise research what approach are you wanting to use as the ""Make it up as we go along losing real money all the way"" wouldn't be my suggested approach. There is something to be said for there being numerous columnists and newsletter peddlers if you want other ideas but I would suggest having a strategy before putting one's toe in the water."