Investing mags.

Over the last year i subscribed to every major investing mag/paper and am now prepared to settle on a couple of them, having given all of them a fair look.

Here are my ratings:

• Fortune, Forbes : Don't bother reading these. Way too positive, optimistic. The picks seem to do worse than the market. Overall not neutral enough.
  
  If anything, these make for good contrarian indicators.
  
  An example : after Chambers was featured recently on the covers of 3/4 magazines in a span of couple of months, I knew it was time to dump Cisco. One of them even called Chambers a hero! He looks more like an options pig to me!
  Shortly after these cover stories, Cisco disappointed everybody and the stock took a good hit!
  
  Krispy Kreme (KKD) CEO, Livengood, was featured on a few covers with words like smart, hot thrown in. Krispy Kreme lost some 70% recently after a flood of bad news, the most depressing of them being what, to me atleast, looks like pure greed/accounting fraud. But at its current price, it is a good turnaround bet. I bought a few recently and plan to keep adding. The recovery may easily take 2/3 years, but I can wait for the reward.
  
• Business Week : Good for keeping up with the happenings. Again, do not follow picks. One piece worth reading is the Barker Portfolio - the analysis here is very enlightening and the stock is usually an outperformer too down the road. Inside Wall Street, another column, is good at exposing some very little known companies doing great things in niche areas, but do not use this as an investing guide without more (a lot more) research.
  
• Money : This does have some good pieces on personal finance management.
  
• Smart Money : This is the only one i find worth continuing my subscription for. The stock picks are ok, but atleast the features seem to be neutral to skeptical of the Street / companies. The Smart Money Screen column has among the best long-term stock picks you will ever find - it is not for a day trader.
  
• Fortune Small Business : This makes for a great read and you can use it to make very long-term stock picks - picks where you will have to wait for years before you see any action, but nevertheless potential blockbusters.
  
• Business 2.0, Fast Business, Inc : Don't bother.
  
• Worth : occasional detailed analysis of past corporate events for e.g is very enlightening, but expensive mag. Read it at the local store.
  
• Barron's : Bad stock picks, but good on trends and interviews.
  
• Wall Street Journal : too optmistic about business in general, but still the best for all-round updates. The Insider Trading lists are helpful, again for long-term investing only.
  
• Investors Business Daily (IBD): The only one i like. This is a great read for company and sector analysis. Especially interesting is the coverage on small and upcoming niche players. The stock picks are good provided you buy on dips/pullbacks. The only thing disappointing about this paper is the political stand - while being pro-Bush is not a problem, some of the editorial pieces (like the recent one that sought to support Bush's Iraq-and-9/11/-are-linked line) just don't belong in an investing publication.