Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
axelrod, when someone uses comments on SA to run ads, we delete their identity from the site. We rely on readers to hit the "report abuse" link so our editors find them quickly. The reason they appear as new commenters is because we normally get them by the time they post a few ads, so they have to start from zero again.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
If you run a transcript search for "consumer spending" to check what other companies are saying, you'll see that the results are interesting, and by no means all negative: seekingalpha.com/searc...
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Thanks Penny, that's helpful.
On Apr 08 10:56 AM PennyHerscher wrote:
> Sure thing, David. FirstRain finds our subscribers (institutional > PMs and analysts) qualitative data points and trends that they would > not otherwise see -- from the web. We do this by generating daily > reports that are personalized to the universe of each subscriber > and collecting a database of searchable web results cetagorized by > investment topics. More recently, we've added the ability to extract > and graph trends in events like executive departures, refusals to > comment, etc. > > In terms of comparison to SeekingAlpha, we author no original content > ourselves. We address the need for unique, pertinent data and perspectives > with research models (software developed by our analysts) and technology > to automatically glean unique data from the entire web in a bottom-up > fashion. Whereas I believe SeekingAlpha approaches the problem by > selecting the best of the best, and organizing it to make it impactful > to the reader.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Thanks for your comment, Penny. Just read your blog post about FirstRain's deal with CapitalIQ and the value of financial blogs. Can you say more about what FirstRain does, and how it compares to Seeking Alpha?
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Donald, thanks for your comments. On GOOG versus TSCM as a hedge: TSCM has the advantage that it's a much closer proxy to Seeking Alpha, because it's a publisher like SA and has exposure to the same advertisers as we do. (At least in theory -- if we do a better job selling advertising!) The downside is it's a relatively small company, and its performance can be moved dramatically by factors other than the ad market which are company-specific.
GOOG has the advantage that it's a better proxy for ad spending rather than company specific factors. The downside is that it's leveraged to the entire pay-per-click ad market, rather than the subset of advertisers who appear on TheStreet.com and our sites. And as you point out, GOOG might be carrying a significant speculative premium.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Yazz, I totally agree: TSCM on its own is a very imperfect hedge. I'm less concerned about SA falling apart than TSCM's stock doing fantastically well. The last year has been bumpy to say the least. :-)
Ideally, you want to short an entire sector to hedge your job exposure (or at least strip out your own sector from any broad index funds you own). In my case, I want to hedge against the risk of a sharp and prolonged downturn in the online advertising market. The problem is I can't find many stocks that do that for me, let alone a sector ETF.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Donald -- that's a thought-provoking suggestion. In the meantime, what's to stop you calling an Investor Relations person and saying "I'm a Seeking Alpha contributor; here's a link to my author page on Seeking Alpha so you can see the my articles on the site"? That describes the relationship exactly as it is, and shows them that you are influential because you have a large readership on SA.
veckknows -- Brett Steenbarger is absolutely terrific, and I feel honored to have him as a contributor to Seeking Alpha. For those who don't know him, his bio and articles are here: seekingalpha.com/autho... and his blog is here: www.traderfeed.blogspo.../
It's characteristic of what's going on in financial media that someone of his talent and experience is writing articles about stocks and the market. Investor Relations people are starting to realize that people like Brett are excellent writers with deep expertise, but don't fall into the traditional category of professional journalists.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Wez, sorry I misunderstood your comment. You're right -- comments can be a problem. The overall quality of comments on Seeking Alpha is excellent; readers often write a few paragraphs of really smart thoughts in response to articles. The high overall quality then makes what you called "the venemous rants" stand out even more.
You should see some interesting developments with comments on Seeking Alpha in the near future. One of the things we're developing is a system for readers to report abusive comments which we hope will go a large way to solving the problem.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Thank you all for your comments!
Zenalgorith and Mark -- thank you for your kind comments. Seeking Alpha is now 40 people, and this sort of feedback makes a big difference to us all.
David -- I think you're right that the community becomes self-governing. We're already seeing that in comments: the weaker articles get an immediate critical response from readers.
Wez -- Negative articles on stocks are a shock for many people, because the mainstream websites usually publish only news and positive stories on stocks. People just aren't used to an article saying that a company is in trouble or its stock is overvalued. But we want to publish those articles because (a) investors need to know when there's a case to sell as well as when there's a case to buy, and (b) if you're never negative, then your positive comments don't carry weight. Perhaps these reasons are why Elliot Spitzer forced the sell-side analysts to publish percentages for their buy, hold and sell ratings -- because he realized they never rated stocks a Sell.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
PAD, I'm actually short TSCM (please see the disclosure at the bottom of the interview), so I'm not qualified to comment on this. But I think TSCM is a great company that has grown its business tremendously over the last year.
The FT article on laptop vendors is uncannily similar to this: Asus Eee: Threat to Apple, Microsoft, HP, Dell and the Hard Drive Vendors? seekingalpha.com/artic...
which Seeking Alpha readers got 20 days earlier. :-)
Covestor and VesTopia: Winners and Losers from Peer to Peer Investing [View article]
Hi Guy,
I mentioned in the article that most people's concerns focus on the security issues. Rikki addressed Covestor's approach to that in his comment above; can you talk about how VesTopia is approaching security?
TD Ameritrade/E*Trade Merger Rumors Should Give Shares a Boost - Barron's [View article]
The fit is actually very good, because a merger would not only allow the companies to cut costs, but would extend E*Trade's banking offering to Ameritrade's customers, leading to stronger asset inflows, higher customer retention, and higher profitability per customer.
But it's not clear that the management succession issues could be easily solved,. It would probably take a much sharper decline in trading volumes that we've seen so far to push AMTD and ETFC into serious talks. So the Barron's speculation is probably too early.
Full disclosure: Long ETFC in my kids' accounts (from when I bought it at about $3 in the last downturn).
Why Bank of America's New Free Trading Will Change the Industry While Benefiting ETFs [View article]
Excellent article, Matt. You've focused mainly on the competition between ETFs and index mutual funds, but what about the implications for actively managed mutual funds? This further widens the total return gap between index ETFs and actively managed funds. In other words, this has got to be incrementally negative for the fund management industry generally... with the excepion of Barclays, which dominates the ETF business.
Wonder what percentage of Barclay's business is ETFs, and how profitable the ETF business is for them... Barclay's trades as an ADR in the US (BCS).
Zecco To Offer Free Stock Trading - Threat to Online Brokers [View article]
Wells Fargo has been offering free trades to some of its customers for a while (see Wells Fargo aims at Schwab, TD Waterhouse, Ameritrade, E*Trade).
It doesn't seem to have had much effect yet. Perhaps once trades get to a certain low price, other factors may become more important: website functionality, execution, spread, and integration with banking.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
seekingalpha.com/searc...
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
On Apr 08 10:56 AM PennyHerscher wrote:
> Sure thing, David. FirstRain finds our subscribers (institutional
> PMs and analysts) qualitative data points and trends that they would
> not otherwise see -- from the web. We do this by generating daily
> reports that are personalized to the universe of each subscriber
> and collecting a database of searchable web results cetagorized by
> investment topics. More recently, we've added the ability to extract
> and graph trends in events like executive departures, refusals to
> comment, etc.
>
> In terms of comparison to SeekingAlpha, we author no original content
> ourselves. We address the need for unique, pertinent data and perspectives
> with research models (software developed by our analysts) and technology
> to automatically glean unique data from the entire web in a bottom-up
> fashion. Whereas I believe SeekingAlpha approaches the problem by
> selecting the best of the best, and organizing it to make it impactful
> to the reader.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
GOOG has the advantage that it's a better proxy for ad spending rather than company specific factors. The downside is that it's leveraged to the entire pay-per-click ad market, rather than the subset of advertisers who appear on TheStreet.com and our sites. And as you point out, GOOG might be carrying a significant speculative premium.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Ideally, you want to short an entire sector to hedge your job exposure (or at least strip out your own sector from any broad index funds you own). In my case, I want to hedge against the risk of a sharp and prolonged downturn in the online advertising market. The problem is I can't find many stocks that do that for me, let alone a sector ETF.
Any suggestions?
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
veckknows -- Brett Steenbarger is absolutely terrific, and I feel honored to have him as a contributor to Seeking Alpha. For those who don't know him, his bio and articles are here:
seekingalpha.com/autho...
and his blog is here:
www.traderfeed.blogspo.../
It's characteristic of what's going on in financial media that someone of his talent and experience is writing articles about stocks and the market. Investor Relations people are starting to realize that people like Brett are excellent writers with deep expertise, but don't fall into the traditional category of professional journalists.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
You should see some interesting developments with comments on Seeking Alpha in the near future. One of the things we're developing is a system for readers to report abusive comments which we hope will go a large way to solving the problem.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Zenalgorith and Mark -- thank you for your kind comments. Seeking Alpha is now 40 people, and this sort of feedback makes a big difference to us all.
David -- I think you're right that the community becomes self-governing. We're already seeing that in comments: the weaker articles get an immediate critical response from readers.
Wez -- Negative articles on stocks are a shock for many people, because the mainstream websites usually publish only news and positive stories on stocks. People just aren't used to an article saying that a company is in trouble or its stock is overvalued. But we want to publish those articles because (a) investors need to know when there's a case to sell as well as when there's a case to buy, and (b) if you're never negative, then your positive comments don't carry weight. Perhaps these reasons are why Elliot Spitzer forced the sell-side analysts to publish percentages for their buy, hold and sell ratings -- because he realized they never rated stocks a Sell.
Is the New Generation of Financial Content an Opportunity or Threat for Investor Relations? [View article]
Under The Radar News - Thursday [View article]
Asus Eee: Threat to Apple, Microsoft, HP, Dell and the Hard Drive Vendors?
seekingalpha.com/artic...
which Seeking Alpha readers got 20 days earlier.
:-)
Covestor and VesTopia: Winners and Losers from Peer to Peer Investing [View article]
I mentioned in the article that most people's concerns focus on the security issues. Rikki addressed Covestor's approach to that in his comment above; can you talk about how VesTopia is approaching security?
David
TD Ameritrade/E*Trade Merger Rumors Should Give Shares a Boost - Barron's [View article]
But it's not clear that the management succession issues could be easily solved,. It would probably take a much sharper decline in trading volumes that we've seen so far to push AMTD and ETFC into serious talks. So the Barron's speculation is probably too early.
Full disclosure: Long ETFC in my kids' accounts (from when I bought it at about $3 in the last downturn).
Why Bank of America's New Free Trading Will Change the Industry While Benefiting ETFs [View article]
Wonder what percentage of Barclay's business is ETFs, and how profitable the ETF business is for them... Barclay's trades as an ADR in the US (BCS).
Zecco To Offer Free Stock Trading - Threat to Online Brokers [View article]
It doesn't seem to have had much effect yet. Perhaps once trades get to a certain low price, other factors may become more important: website functionality, execution, spread, and integration with banking.