Investing.com 2016: Most Read, Most Popular, Most Searched

Before we completely close the books on 2016, we decided to take a look at what users found most appealing on the site during the past year—the most read news and analysis articles; most followed authors; most searched instruments and the instruments most uploaded to user portfolios; most popular price and economic calendar alerts.

Among the items of interest were quite a few posts focused on events and instruments that made headlines repeatedly during the year including Fed rate decisions or lack thereof, Brexit, oil, gold, the euro and the U.S. dollar. An array of high profile indices and stocks were the subjects of numerous site searches this past year, including the S&P 500, the DAX, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Tesla.

But there were also some things that surprised us. The popularity of searches in the US about two triple bull gold miner ETFs during a year when the promise of a gold bull market failed to materialize, and the large amount of global user portfolios that monitor the Turkish lira.

We wish each of you a happy, peaceful and prosperous 2017.

5 Most Read News Stories

1. Saudi-Iran tensions scupper deal to freeze oil output
2. Fed rate hike priced in, markets look for hints at 2017
3. Fed's Yellen sees stronger case for interest rate hike
4. Fed raises rates, sees faster pace of increases in 2017
5. Wall St. drops amid worries over North Korea test, rate outlook

5 Most Read Opinion and Analysis Posts

1. Why Gold Will Drop Below $1000 In 2017
2. Brexit: Everything You Need To Know (But Were Afraid To Ask)
3. Here's The Dirty Secret About Today's 'Secret' Oil Meeting
4. Time To Sell The USD?
5. Outlook 2017: What To Expect From Oil, Gold, USD and FX

5 Most Followed Authors:

1. Kathy Lien (most recent article, here)
2. Lance Roberts (most recent article, here)
3. Investing.com (previous article, here)
4. Petros Steriotis (most recent article, here)
5. Tied: Marc Chandler (most recent article, here) and Ellen R. Wald (most recent article, here)

Price Alerts Requested: Top 5 Instruments

1. Crude Oil
2. Gold
3. Euro US Dollar
4. US Dollar Japanese Yen
5. Dow Jones Industrial Average

Brent Oil, British Pound US Dollar, Germany's DAX and Natural Gas were runners up in this category.

Event Alerts Requested: Top 5 Economic Events

1. U.S. Crude Oil Inventories
2. U.S. Nonfarm Payrolls
3. Fed Interest Rate Decision
4. U.S. ADP Nonfarm Employment Change
5. U.S. Unemployment Rate

U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) QoQ, Eurozone Consumer Price Index (CPI) YoY and U.S. CB Consumer Confidence were runners up in this category.

10 Most Searched Instruments

Because Investing.com is part of a global financial portal comprised of 28 other editions in 21 languages, we thought it might be interesting to see what global users are interested in vs what U.S.-based users look for. So we compiled a list of most searched instruments for both our global and U.S. audiences. We did the same for portfolio holdings, below. Here's what we found:

Global

1. Euro US Dollar
2. Apple
3. Crude Oil
4. Gold
5. Nifty 50
6. Facebook
7. S&P 500
8. Amazon
9. Tesla Motors
10. US Dollar Japanese Yen

U.S. Only

1. Apple
2. S&P 500
3. Euro US Dollar
4. Crude Oil
5. Direxion Daily Junior Gold Miners Bull 3X Shares
6. Dow Jones Industrial Average
7. Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bull 3X Shares
8. Amazon
9. Gold
10. SPDR Gold Shares ETF

Top 10 Financial Assets in User Portfolios

Global

1. Euro US Dollar
2. Crude Oil
3. Gold
4. US Dollar/Turkish Lira
5. Brent Oil
6. Dow Jones Futures
7. DAX
8. S&P 500
9. Apple
10. US Dollar Japanese Yen

U.S. Only

1. Euro US Dollar
2. Crude Oil
3. Gold
4. Apple
5. S&P 500
6. Dow Jones Futures
7. US Dollar Japanese Yen
8. SPDR S&P 500 ETF
9. S&P 500 Futures
10. US Dollar Index