Seeking Alpha is a stock market blog that provides free stock market

Stock market

A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...

 analysis primarily from money managers, investment

Investment

Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...

 newsletter

Newsletter

A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally about one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers. Newspapers and leaflets are types of newsletters. Additionally, newsletters delivered electronically via email have gained rapid acceptance for the same reasons email in...

 writers, and the general public. Alpha

Alpha (investment)

Alpha is a risk-adjusted measure of the so-called active return on an investment. It is the return in excess of the compensation for the risk borne, and thus commonly used to assess active managers' performances...

is a financial term referring to a stock

Stock

The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...

's performance, relative to the market indexes used by fund managers. So, fund managers "seek alpha".

Seeking Alpha focuses on opinion and analysis rather than news. Although it has its own editorial staff, it is primarily written by investor

Investor

An investor is a party that makes an investment into one or more categories of assets --- equity, debt securities, real estate, currency, commodity, derivatives such as put and call options, etc...

s who describe their personal approach to stock picking and portfolio management, rather than by journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

s. Its readership includes money managers, research analysts, investment bankers, and individual investors.

Seeking Alpha was started in 2004 by David Jackson, who was ranked #2 on U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report is an American news magazine published from Washington, D.C. Along with Time and Newsweek it was for many years a leading news weekly, focusing more than its counterparts on political, economic, health and education stories...

's list of global 'Market Movers' gaining the most influence in 2009. Seeking Alpha has 80 employees on three continents and has partnerships with Yahoo! Finance

Yahoo! Finance

Yahoo! Finance is a service from Yahoo! that provides financial information. It is the top financial news and research website in the United States, with more than 23 million visitors in February 2010, according to comScore....

, Dow Jones MarketWatch

MarketWatch

MarketWatch operates a financial information website that provides business news, analysis and stock market data to some 6 million people. MarketWatch offers personal finance news and advice, tools for investors and access to industry research. Along with its flagship website, the company operates...

, E-Trade, and CNET

CNET

CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...

. The company is backed by Benchmark Capital

Benchmark Capital

Benchmark Capital is a venture capital firm responsible for the early stage funding of some very successful startups. In 1997, the firm invested $6.7 million in eBay, which became worth more than $5 billion by the spring of 1999. Other high-profile investments include Ariba, Juniper Networks, Red...

, a firm that funded eBay

EBay

eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

.

Seeking Alpha offers summaries of Jim Cramer's comments. The company has also developed a widget

Widget

Widget may refer to:*Widget , a placeholder for a manufactured device*GUI widget in computer programming, a reusable element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement and provides standardized data manipulation...

 that features stock quotes from the NYSE

New York Stock Exchange

The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...

, NASDAQ

NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

, AMEX

American Stock Exchange

NYSE Amex Equities, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange is an American stock exchange situated in New York. AMEX was a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953, it was known as the New York Curb Exchange. On January 17, 2008, NYSE Euronext announced it would acquire the...

, Pink Sheets

Pink Sheets

OTC Markets Group, Inc., informally known as "Pink Sheets", is a private company that provides services to the U.S. over-the-counter securities market including electronic quotations, trading, messaging, and information platforms. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, OTC...

, and OTC Bulletin Board

OTC Bulletin Board

The OTC Bulletin Board or OTCBB is an interdealer electronic quotation system in the United States that displays real-time quotes, last-sale prices, and volume information for many over-the-counter equity securities that are not listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange or a national securities exchange...

s.

Seeking Alpha is the largest stock market blog, with over 4000 unpaid contributors, at a rate of about 250 articles per day. Its material is also available via BlackBerry

BlackBerry

BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...

 and RSS feed. Also in 2007, Seeking Alpha was the recipient of Forbes

Forbes

Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

' Best of the Web Award and Kiplinger

Kiplinger

Kiplinger is a Washington, D.C.-based publisher of business forecasts and personal finance advice, available in print, online, audio, video and software products ....

's Award for Most Informative Website. It was also recommended on Fox News by Liz MacDonald

Liz MacDonald

Elizabeth MacDonald is a business journalist who appears on Fox Business and Fox News, and has been a guest commentator on other t.v. shows...

as a top financial blog the same year. According to Google Analytics, Seeking Alpha currently has 6.5 million unique monthly readers and 65 million monthly pageviews. Seeking Alpha has a large distribution network including Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, Etrade, Nasdaq, Bing, MSN, CNet and others. Seeking Alpha claims that combined with this distribution network, its contributors' articles have a total reach of over 50 million unique monthly readers. In January 2010, Seeking Alpha launched a premium program which promises to pay its contributors for exclusive content.

According to Nielsen Analytics, Seeking Alpha has the leading audience of any financial website including Bloomberg, CNN Money, and The Wall Street Journal. Nielsen reported that Seeking Alpha has the highest percentage of C-level executives (17.6%), as well as the most educated (77.2% with graduate or post graduate degrees), the wealthiest (exact percentage undisclosed) and the most active investors (52%).