UPDATE: Seeking Alpha CEO responded:
Tim, the only circumstances under which we delete the bios of contributing authors are:
- if they are illegal, pornographic etc.
- if the author behaves in a way that requires the deletion of their entire identity on SA (normally only professional spammers or people who are consistently abusive).
Contributing authors are able to update (and therefore delete) their own bios. But we rarely see authors delete their own bios. If no bio is in place, it’s usually because we are waiting for the author to provide it. In that case, we insert the standard text that you quoted stating that “xxx is a new contributor to Seeking Alpha who will soon submit a bio.” In this case, it looks as though the author might have deleted his/her bio, and our default text therefore appeared.
Note, however, that Seeking Alpha contributors can’t delete their published articles from SA, or change the name under which those articles are published. This is one of the ways that SA provides accountability to readers, in contrast to the websites and blogs controlled by the authors themselves: readers can evaluate authors’ track records, and authors aren’t able to “cover their tracks” or delete articles retroactively.
It was that feature that enabled you to (correctly) point out that in this case the author isn’t new.
We’ll look into it.
REMEMBER: You have until Friday November 6th to pre-order any/all of my 4 new instructional DVDs to get access to special FREE followup webinars on each topic…these instructional DVD packages will help you get smarter faster, saving you from thousands of dollars in ignorant trading losses
The other day I bought 1,000 shares of Diedrich Coffee Inc. (DDRX) at $25.70 and as I explained to TIMalert subscribers:
Bought 1000 DDRX at 25.70ish…my Vegas seminar attendees know I spotted this breakout at $26 the other day but hesitated and missed the runup to $31…now I’ve been given a second chance due to the overall market headfake of the past few days and a hugely negative Seeking Alpha written by an analyst at a hedge fund…I won’t dispute the article because the level of forensic accounting is way above me, but I will say that the author has written several other negative pieces in 2008 (why the 1+ year break, hmmmm, fishy) on stocks like CACC, WHG and DTSI, 2 out of 3 of which were actually great times to buy those stocks as DTSI and CACC nearly doubled over the next few months, while he was right about WHG’s valuation and that stock dipped a bit over the next few months…basically this guy is a hardcore value investor so while they can be right over the longterm, they dont understand short squeezes/NASDAQ momentum stocks…this report is a buy signal as it combined with any technical bounce here can really power the next leg up as these hardcore value investors learn the meaning of the term “short squeeze”
this stock has huuuuge support in the $25s, other coffee stocks are rebounding nicely today and shorts can try to use reason all they want…this stock looks primed to squeeze them for $3 or even $4+/share…mental stop loss at $25ish if I’m wrong, goal is to sell this in the $28-$29 range in the next few days as bottoming here would mean the breakout fromt he other day is now confirmed and its possible to resume its perfect uptrend back to the low $30s…
Well I was deadwrong about it squeezing to the $30s and the support at $25, as the overall market tanked and that Seeking Alpha article took the wind out of the stock all the way down to $20ish.
The cool thing about my strategy is that when I’m wrong, I get out quick…as I always will when a stock doesn’t act EXACTLY the way I want…and I nabbed a small profit of $800ish, selling the next morning at $26.53 (any TIMalert subscribers who held need to watch my instructional DVD packages (especially my brand new TIMfundamentals Part Deux DVD package) which actually teach my strategy (surprise!) to learn when exactly I cut losses on non-pump & dumps/speculative trades.
Several other TIMalert subscribers profited, some lost, but I’m too tired to look back and copy and paste everyone’s trades. Overall, we as a group basically broke even.
The part when this gets interesting is after the market close yesterday when Peet’s Coffee & Tea Inc. (PEET) bought out DDRX at $26/share, a 28% premium over the Seeking Alpa-influenced closing price of $20ish. If I was a shareholder of DDRX and I sold due to that article and/or its inability to hold $25/share technical support, I’d want to know who is this Seeking Alpha article writer? What firm does he work for? How many shares short did they have? Should he be required to disclose how big a position an author has instead of just saying “Disclosure: Short DDRX” and did Jack’s firm cover their short position after the article caused a 25% drop in stock price?
Kinda interesting if his firm had 500,000 share short? That’d be much more interesting if they were only short 50,000 shares, right? We’ll probly never know, especially since Seeking Alpha just changed the writer’s bio to delete the fact that he is an analyst at a hedge fund!
YUP, WHY DID SEEKING ALPHA CHANGE THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITER WHO WROTE SUCH A NEGATIVE PIECE AFTER THE PIECE CAUSED THE STOCK TO TANK 25%, SCREWING THE LONGS WHO LISTENED AND SOLD JUST A FEW DAYS BEFORE THIS BUYOUT?
Seeking Alpha pulled a you-know-who, changing their website after the fact to try to hide the evidence of this writer’s crime.
This is what the author’s biography now says:
Jackson America is a new contributor to Seeking Alpha who will soon submit a bio.
Note: Seeking Alpha editors have contact information for all contributors, to enable ongoing communication regarding articles published.
Unfortunately for Seeking Alpha, that is a BOLD-FACED LIE:
Jackson America is NOT a new contributor, everyone can plainly see he has written 7 articles over 2 years:
Diedrich Coffee: A Web of Misrepresentations
on Oct 29, 2009 • DDRX, GMCR, PEET
CACC: Recent Events Add to the Short Thesis
on Jul 31, 2008 • ACF, CACC, CPSS
Short Westwood Holdings: Why Valuation Matters
on Jul 27, 2008 • WHG
CACC: An Ideal Play on the Consumer, Auto, and Credit Markets
on Jul 09, 2008 • CACC
DTS Even More Alarming After Q4 Earnings
on Feb 29, 2008 • DTSI
Sounding the Alarm on DTS Inc.
on Feb 28, 2008 • DTSI
The Sad Truth for Answers Corporation Bulls
on Mar 27, 2007 • ANSW
Worse yet, by searching Google Cache, anyone can easily find Jackson America’s bio before Seeking Alpha deleted it and covered it up with that lie:
Jack is an analyst at a small long/short asset management company. Jack has been a forensic analyst for over a decade and has built a career around finding stocks where the “story” and the underlying “facts” do not reconcile.
Something tells me “Jack” and Seeking Alpha will soon be facing some very serious questioning from those angry shareholders scared out of their position just days before the takeover.
Tags: Diedrich Coffee Takeover, Seeking Alpha Diedrich Coffee, Seeking Alpha Lie, Seeking Alpha Scandal
