Real Money is what you can call a “premium members area” offered by TheStreet.com. The service offers blogs, a columnist conversation section and articles that aren’t posted on the main free site (at least not until a later date).

Blogs

Real Money features the blogs of several traders but the “money guy” that most people follow is Jim Cramer. If you are a fan of Cramer than you certainly will get your money’s worth simply from reading his thoughts on the current days market. What I found back in the day is that many of the topics he touched on, on his radio show, were directly mentioned on his blog beforehand. So now that he does not have his radio show any more you can still get an idea of what he would talk about if he still had the show.

Another trader who participates with his own blog is Cody Willard, who himself is a hedge fund manager. His posts lean more towards the tech side of things and are always interesting.

James “Rev Shark” De Porre provides readers with a more bearish tone on his blog which at time may sound repetitive. However, it’s always good to get a perspective from every side and he surely does balance out Cramer’s bullish leanings.

Columnist Conversation & Articles

The columnist conversation feature on Real Money can basically be described in the title. It’s just a bunch of columnist/traders posting comments to each other. There are some interesting tidbits that can be gathered from it but I don’t really find it that useful.

The articles themselves are an added bonus but to me they don’t seem like anything worth subscribing for. Some do offer good technical analysis though.

What I Don’t Like

There are a few things I would change with the way the site is structured.

• I would make the columnist conversation threaded so you can see all replies in an orderly presentation.
• I would also make the columnist conversation be all on one page (I believe they use multiple pages to rack up the ad impressions which is annoying for a paid service)
• The blogs, I have the same problem with. I would like the blogs to list at least 3 articles in full on one page instead of always having to click.

The site used to load slowly at times in the past for me but lately that problem seems to be fixed and I haven’t experienced many annoying delays in page loads. However, for a paid service, I find that there are too many ads on loaded on the site (same amount as the free section of thestreet.com). While they don’t necessarily interfere with the content, they do make the pages look “busy” which, again, for a paid service is kind of annoying.

Costs

Real Money is offering users a 30 day free trial to test drive their service. If you don’t think it’s worth the money, simply cancel before your trial subscription ends and you won’t be billed.

The service costs $229.95 annually, although at this time they are offering 20% off which would make an annual membership come to $183.95.

If you choose to go with the monthly option, it runs $34.95 per month.

Overall Conclusion

The service does offer a bunch of different opinions and lots of information in one place which makes things easier than surfing around different blogs. However, I find if you combine a list of quality market bloggers, they will offer just as much, if not more, for free. Those that are fans and followers of Cramer will enjoy the service as he does update his blog multiple times a day and all the “Mad Money” noise is taken out. The Cody Willard blog is a pleasant surprise as it does keep you on top of the tech trends.

To conclude, I feel this may work for some users but it certainly is not for everyone so I suggest you take the free 30 day trial to see if it fits your style and needs.

Click here to find more about Real Money.

Briefing.com Platinum Overview

The service tells you right on the main page as to who it is intended for: “If you need live market information and insight, trade actively and want short-term trading ideas, our Platinum serivce may be right for you”

The most popular feature of the service is called Live In Play®. What it does is provide you with streaming information that relates to all the happenings in the market. I find it very useful and it’s something I have streaming in one of my monitors throughout the trading day. They do a great job of getting to the point in quick, easy to understand messages and break news faster then the TV stations.

But there is much more to Briefing.com’s platinum service than just the Live In Play® feature. It’s a one stop shop for all your market needs. Below are a few screenshots of their services.

Briefing.com Platinum Standout Points

Using the Live In Play® feature you can search posts that relate to a company going back as far as two years. This gives you an enormous amount of information and research your at your finger tips.

I really like the clean design, lack of ads, and how quickly the pages load.

The calendars are a great reference point as to what is happening on any current trading day. They have calendars for everything from same store sales reports to conference schedules. This feature is really comprehensive.

Briefing.com Platinum Drawbacks

Honestly, there is not much here that I would change so thus I can’t really find any negatives. One thing though, which has more to do with the individual traders psychology rather then the service itself, is that sometimes Briefing.com gives you too much information. This can resort in your jumping in and out of positions based on what you read but that is something that you must have under control in order to trade successfully in the first place.

Pricing

The service costs $29.95 monthly or $300.00 for the year. They also offer a free trial to try out the service. The price of a subscription is a bargain especially when compared to other services on the internet.