TIMOTHYSYKES.COM
TwitterFacebookYouTube

My Take On The New StockTwits.com: Better Make It A Meritocracy

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Sat 18th of Oct, 2008 10:59:31 AM

WallStrip creator, hedge fund manager and true web 2.0 Godfather Howard Lindzon and master coder Soren just launched the new StockTwits.com and I gotta say it’s pretty sweet looking.

It’s built on top of Twitter–you can follow my updates here– (I’m not even gonna explain what Twitter is cuz if you don’t know, you’ve been living under a cave and I can’t help you) and instead of asking “what are you doing?”, it asks “what are you trading?”

Basically another stock message board for all you guys to follow, it’s just cooler than all the others, especially since it’s just the beginning…

Howard describes it here as:

There are many different ways to use it. You can just watch the whole stream of stock conversation or you can create your own filters.

I like it and look forward to seeing what it’ll become, so here’s my wish list:

1. ANALysts are right about 35% of the time and 70% of mutual fund managers fail to beat the S&P 500 each year and those guys are smart enough to have found ways to get paid for their mediocre efforts aka this industry is full of talkers who basically suck at beating the market. The only way to truly see how good everyone is for transparent platforms like Covestor to take off.

Please integrate StockTwits.com with Covestor.com (Howard’s an investor in both) and make it a meritocracy. Gotta respect the top 20 people ranked on Covestor (Not coincidentally, I’m still #1, which is pathetic, and 10 of whom are PennyStockers, yeahhhhhhh!) waaaaay more than the bottom 20.

2. I see you’ve got some recommended Twitterers and I’m not on there (yah, I ain’t getting paid to promote this site), probly cuz I’m too self-promotional/cocky/deal with manipulated penny stocks/proud to call everyone out on the BS that is this joke of an industry…WTF?…whatever…you will respect my totally transparent 150% return in the last year, which kicks the arses of everyone on your list, most of whom are down biiiig and should stop commenting and start reading/learning more.

3. Add functionality for those of us who’ve proven our trading/stock picking skills and have created a biz model around real-time alerts like I have with TIMalerts. I’m all for community, but you know good information is hard to come by and deserves a premium. StockTwits Premium would be kick ass!

4. Forget underperforming mutual fund managers and broke ass traders in disbelief, those who don’t make $ nor have found a way to get paid a regular salary for their useless chatter should be ignored completely. It might be a little mean, but it would be awesome if someone who is wrong /says dumb stuff too often can get booted off your site.

That’s all I can think of right now, again, congrats to Howard & Soren, everyone else, check their site out and see the future of stock market commentary.

Share this post:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • HackerNews
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Google Bookmarks

Tags:

Previous: « You Want Me To Talk Like...

Next: « Why Andrew Lahde, aka...

Related Posts

  • McLarty
    Hey Tim,

    Got a few friendly comments,

    1. 70 % of mutual fund managers, CAN'T beat the market, because they ARE the market. Do you get what I'm saying? 70% of investors, can't possibly be above the average. Mathematically impossible. And if they take even 1/2% for their services...then the rate of those who can't outperform, climbs. Do they beat retail? I'll bet on that...and there are tons of funds out there that add to the underperform list because the offer ~7% per year...and much less downside.

    2. I know you've got a brand to hold up, but it shouldn't cross your mind that you're not being paid to promote a good site. I don't know forsure, why you never made the list, but I bet I can guess. It's likely because your feed is full of your own kool-aid, advertisements, and links to yourself. I remember when you signed up for twitter, you said you were signing up, so that "more people come to your blog"...you know why I signed up? For the conversation. That's it. No alterier motive. And your strategy works, to beat the market, because you likely invest tons of hard work. Heir go your strategy has value but your twitter feed might not, hence not recommended...

    3. You know why you're not as big as google is? cause they don't charge the users. If stocktwits charges a premium for the good shit...I'll stop using the $ sign...pretty friggin' quick.

    4. Somebody who is often wrong, is just as useful as somebody who is often right. Just take the opposite trade. And, anybody can have a bad year Tim, and say dumb stuff. You have done both, and so have I.

    Now...you can easily attack me or disagree with my commentary, cause I'm pretty much a nobody out here in the blogosphere...I don't have a huge following, I'm just a young gun, trying to apply some academics. Just another market participant...adding to the conversation. But, for what it's worth, Tim, I can relate to your strategy being widely unaccepted while simultanously greatly profitable. I too have a strategy that prints coin (in most markets) and is so grossly untolerated that I'm faced with skepticism, jealousy, ignorance, and people pointing to outliers. I short plain vanilla derivatives. ALL their charts are parabolic south by south-east towards zero. So why the hell don't more people do it? I don't know...probably the same reason more people don't apply your strategy...
  • mcclarty, good comments, my response:

    1. conversation with people who dont post their actual trades doesnt help me...i have no idea who to trust and neither do u....maybe u get 5 good tips and then 4 bad ones form someone, not worth my time

    2. i beat the market cuz PennyStocking is easy, i invest waaay more time blogging/promoting cuz people dont seem to get it as they consistently talk about infinitely more random shit like GOOG

    3. stocktwits will inevitably have a premium section, every website built to last will...good info comes at a price, the price depends on how good the info is...free info will inevitably be not as good as nobody is willing to pay for it

    4. i dont care if you're a somebody or nobody, thats the beauty of the blogosphere, u can prove yourself...which is why i have 2k followers on covestor and fred wilson only has 200....i dare u to join and dethrone me, its pathetic that i'm still #1 ranking-wise when i spend more time blogging/promoting
  • thx timmay. howard here.

    lets give it a few months before we change too much. I know you have ideas, but stocktwits was built to solve something I wanted and we are very happy that others like it and we are digesting everything. the power of an OPEN community is that evryone will find a use for it. You are smart, you should be happy tht everyone is not as smart as you. trade against the flow for now :)

    BTW the power of twitter and stocktwits is you can filter from day one. just follow people you respect if thats all you need.

    anyways...see you soon
  • another solid response from the godfather, thats why he has more $ than me :)
  • BASIC MATH
    McLarty - October 18th, 2008 at 12:49 pm

    You need to work on your math skills. Mutual funds are only a % of the market. If they hypotheticaly make up 50% then 100% of them could beat the market.


    Tim's point is the average stock mutual fund manager's return does fall below the S&P.


    Trust me on the math. Tim does.
  • I used StockTwits on Friday .... at first I found it great, some good dialogue was happening but then the stock spammers moved in and I lost interest
    As more people go online it will degenerate into a mess of spammey posts and lose any relevance.
  • Thanks for the post love timmay.

    @Cyclops:

    I'm glad you had a chance to try out StockTwits, but don't give up on us so fast. We offer a few different ways of helping you filter out the noise and spammers (if you want to email the username of anyone you see spamming, please send to feedback AT stocktwits DOT com)

    The best way to start is my checking out the recommended list at http://stocktwits.com/recommended and following people there. Next, click on my portfolio and enter a list of stocks that you want to watch. When you then click on the portfolio stream, you get a filtered list of just the stocks you want to see. This can help you find other people that are talking about the same stocks that you are watching.

    Once you've found some people from either the portfolio stream and/or the recommended list, clicking on your friends stream will give you a great filtered stream of just the people that you trust.

    We have lots more ways of filtering and tuning out the noise and spammers under development, but what I've outlined here is how I use StockTwits everyday.

    Hope that helps.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Previous: « You Want Me To Talk Like...

Next: « Why Andrew Lahde, aka...