Is there anyone (especially online) who's collected reasonably well-informed stock picks from, say, 2, 5, or 15 years ago and explained why the recommendations did or did not work out? Is there a better way to track that stuff down than hunting around for old articles on financial websites? It seems like making the effort to learn from mistakes in the past would help guard against over-optimistic, irrationally exuberant picks today.

InvestingFilter: Is there anything inherently flawed about investing in index funds? I recently opened up a Roth IRA, and have invested in an S&P 500 Index Fund. I'll also be investing in a bond index soon. I've been reading articles online and books such as 'The Lazy Person's Guide To Investing' by Paul Farrell. These books make it seem that investing in anything but index funds sets you up for a loss long term. In my opinion, I'm a passive investor. I don't have the inclination to try and pick hot stocks. I'm fine getting a market average return. Farrell's book and some other sources such David Swenson make it seem that investing in anything but an index fund is lunacy. They harp on about load funds and how actively managed funds always underperform the market.

Is there a finance website that can plot historical and current graphs of a stock price in a currency other than that of its local exchange, e.g. the stock price of IBM in USD multiplied by the (moving, not current!) EUR:USD exchange rate? If this is easy to do on Google or Yahoo Finance then I'm obviously missing something!

When an insider sells their shares of stock in a company, is there a way to find out WHO sold their stock quickly thereafter? A friend of mine owns shares of stock in a company. She noticed (from Yahoo Finance) that a large amount of stock was sold by one person recently. Yahoo noted that this was an "insider transaction". When this type of thing has happened in the past, she has noticed that sometimes the name of the person who sold the stock doesn't show up until a month later. She is curious about why this is so and if there is a way to know WHO sold their stock when it

Are there books that explain, in great detail, the systems that clear trades (equities and options) on the markets and shuffle funds among banks in the U.S.? This is a personal curiosity. I know how all of these things work, but I am interested in the mechanisms behind them. Specifically, I'm looking for books (or other resources) that explain in detail what happens in...

• Buying a stock -- info about how big brokerages work the spread, and also info about the electronic systems that provide liquidity for smaller trades
• Shorting a stock -- what steps does the broker take to find a bank from which to borrow the shares?