Free investment newsletters are not a way to get decent advice about investing. What you will get is a lot of  Chicken Little "Sky is Falling! Sky is Falling!" nonsense about how all your money will evaporate unless you buy this other newsletter or this groundbreaking book, or how you can turn $3.98 into a million dollars in just five months.

People who are interested in investments are not motivated by an altruistic desire to make others rich for free: good advice in investing is hard work and quite boring.

The Hulber Financial Digest evaluates newsletters by describing the success rate of their recommended investments. It is not very expensive and is quite well done. Moreover, it is unbiased, and will not try to sell you anything. After you have decided the sort of things that suits your comfort level and risk policy:  stocks, bonds, mutual funds, whatever, then subscribe to a newsletter than deals with this and follow their advice.

It has worked for me.

Thanks. I've seen this site before but didn't think about it in this context. I'll bookmark it.

I see this description, right on the first page. Just the kind of stuff I'm looking for.

"...In the Economy category, statistics for "Current Account Balance," "Exports," "Imports," "Reserves of foreign exchange and gold," "Stock of direct foreign investment - at home," and "Stock of direct foreign investment - abroad" now include two year's worth of data;...".

Relative to world markets, one source you absolutely need to review is

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

which is the World Factbook published by our CIA.  With all due recognition for the spin doctoring they do in their presentations about the US itself and a few foreign nations with undue influence on the Witty Houze, their economic background data is unmatched for quality and relevance re the vast majority of the world.

Totally agreed. I too retired early and live on investments. I treat investing as my part time 'job' in order that I continue my income.

I also agree that all advice is conflicting. I sort through the various ideas and try to make a reasonable decision based on everything I read.  And yes, I'm looking for more info on the economies of the world -- not specific investments.

That example, bondsonline, does that. I'm looking for more of that, especially for overseas markets which I've not yet discovered.

Good to hear from someone else who truly understands what investing is supposed to be.

I'll take a look at wallstreetwindow. However, I'm not a fan of U.S. investing (other than junk bonds). I'm seeking equities on the world market and need more economic background on various countries.

first of all, nearly all the information you get for free is worthless.  investing is not about chasing the hot investments - if you do this you will always be an hour late and a dollar short.  Further, i have realized that the free advise you get is contrary to the paid advice FROM THAT VERY SAME PERSON.

Free advise is for understanding concepts, not for making specific investing decisions.

as an economic analyst (my weekly review of economic factors are published on seekingalpha), my views are a little distorted over the significance of an event from an investing view.  Economics and investing run in different cycles.

because of this, i am unable to see when an event will occur.  knowing that the dollar will devalue is less important than being able to forecast when it will happen.  if you react too soon, the short term dynamics (macroeconomic factors) will cause an immediate loss of value to what you purchased.

i make my money from investing - i live on my investments.  i read and write on economic matters as they relate to investing 8 hours per day.  you will find all the advise is conflicting.

How i invested from 1970 to 2007 has been completely changed in 2009.  i sat in cash through 2008.  i now pay for advice because you need to know when to jump on the bankwagon WHILE IT IS STILL DECLINING.  You purchase when things are bad - not when they are good.

one such advise (i do not use them but their reputation is very good) is http://www.wallstreetwindow.com/. but you need to do your own research.  you need to find an investing method which matches your personality.

good luck.  my personal belief is that all investments (except maybe real estate) will have a positive overall bias for the next 12 months (of course it will cycle up and down but the overall result will be higher than today).

steven hansen

http://seekingalpha.com/author/steven-hansen

Oy!  There's SO MUCH stuff on the web, near impossible to narrow in a helpful way.  Suggestion:  plug your keywords into the Google search engine, one at a time, and review the thousands upon perhaps millions of things they come up with, at least the first few pages of each search result.  I have an entire page of URLs that condenses the things that I've found most interesting, FRB, SEC search site, basic news from AOL, Yahoo, CNBC, and NYT.  Those basic news sources are pretty specific to "general economic info, bonds, equities" and relevant world markets.  Nearly all of it is the general info you seek and "almost" never the hypists "buy this yesterday" nonsense.  Key point about everything I mentioned is that nobody anywhere among them ever asks nor requires you to "send money" although sometimes you'll see an adwierdteasement from some scammer who does attempt that and pays the general info sources for the privilege of having their scamvertisement published.