CNNMoney.com has launched redesigned ticker pages with a number of new and excellent features including a real time stock conversation widget powered by StockTwits. So, while researching the individual stocks users are most interested in, they can now scan what StockTwits community members are tweeting and charting as the market happens. This is very cool!
We are very pleased to be working with CNN Money on our premier API collaboration, adding contextual relevance to their ticker pages crafted by the brightest community members on StockTwits.
So bring your ‘A’ game StockTwits contributors and tweet your very best ideas in real time!
For zero percent interest the only thing that brings me joy from banking is just calling my new weekly bank and yelling about a wire transfer that I never made …and than hanging up. It’s the little things that help me through my day.
Lately, I am tempted to move all my banking to Shittybank $C because they ‘Never Sleep’. I can call them at 2 pm in the morning and just lay into them. That’s worth something to me.
The only think to temper my bullishness in the Forex Market these days is Shittybank’s aggressive move INTO it.
Here all all the reasons that Shittybank ‘The Tarp Machine’ should now be your FX broker of choice .
It makes sense that a bank that leveraged up their balance sheet to 40 to 1 would like you to take your last bit of money they did not piss away and leverage it at 40 to 1 in the forex markets.
It’s twisted out there right now.
I of course will let Jamba Juice $JMBA (I am long) be my FX broker before Shittybank.
It will NEVER be fair and I know that. That’s just life.
It’s just not right though to have Shittybank stick it in and we can vote with our accounts and wallets. Obviously, not enough of us are.
As a co-founder and CEO of Stocktwits, and angel investor in so many web deals, I spend a lot of time thinking about web advertising.
Is it worth doing it? What’s the time sink? How do I measure it? how do I sell it? Who should we sell it to? Where do I buy it?
One person Soren and I have asked to help us with all of the above and more is Jonathan Mendez who has a cool blog as well ‘Optimize and Prophesize’.
In response to my ‘Transparency Post’ yesterday he commented:
Advertising legacy was actually noted early in its formation as the famous Department store scion John Wanamaker with the famous line “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Now we live in a world where we gaining the intelligence to know “which half” — problem is for media and agencies, once everyone knows, that half doesn’t get spent.
The rise of performance advertising on the web counters this in an interesting way as dollars are managed to volume (sales/leads) and cost per. Here waste is weeded out rather quickly. The most interesting thing going on here in regards to waste is how Google brilliantly manages it. This is really their “special sauce” and unless you are really in the depths of Search Advertising you wouldn’t ever stop to think about the effects of waste during on-boarding or the use of match types or quality scoring but it’s happening. The lesson here is that if you can make a system that can bundle in waste but still makes people happy & successful with a modicum of transparency, you’ve hit a grand slam.
Interestingly, display advertising, once hailed as the bastion for Internet brand dollars is also now being consumed by performance campaigns because of the falling prices (due to increased supply). The issues here are a bit different as transparency is hindered due to the many layers of networks and technologies that have evolved in the stack between the publisher and advertiser. That will change. Performance dollars follow the path of least resistance.
Are people scared of the real numbers? In display they should be.
Ad impressions on Search are FREE. In Display every impression costs you money. The amount of people that click ads from search on a per impression basis is 4600% higher than display. That’s a big number. When your industry is broken to the core, why would you want to shine a light on that?
Not to worry, this decade will begin the rise of new advertising channels and I believe, as you do, transparency will be a core value prop.
I just completed my opening statement.
If this topic is important to you…head on over to his blog for some good reading. That’s what I have been doing lately. Please chime in with some other great blogs on the topic of web advertising.
I don’t think so, but I never went to Harvard or had $1 billion to manage around an algorithm. Google $goog can’t be transparent with their algorithms and had to pull out of China because of it (maybe).
I have been thinking about one of my rants on the financial industry that ‘Transparency is the NEW Alpha’.
You could say the same thing about many industries. Advertising comes to mind. I will come back to that.
Alpha has been the buzzword in the hedge fund industry for a long time. Felix Salmon, always grumpy, had a good post way back in 2006 on the subject of ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’. If Al Pacino were making good movies today he would star in ‘AND ‘ALPHA’ for All’:
I am in the camp that Transparency can be your ‘Alpha’. The market will do what the market will do so my ‘Alpha’ (secret sauce) is just being available and not too confusing.
Back to advertising…
As an entrepreneur in the web space, advertising sickens me. It is beyond confusing. While the technology was supposed to simplify things, this idiot would argue otherwise. Of course there are good people, businesses and technologies, but beyond adsense and keyword bidding, little makes common sense. It feels like everyone in media, content and advertising is scared of the real numbers. Furthermore, I don’t think people know what to truly measure. Other than the financial space, there seems to be no bigger industry with a ‘moat’ around the truth, than advertising.
I am hoping that will change. I think transparency is an edge in 2010 and beyond to bring that change.
We need a transparency bubble in advertising and finance and we will get it.
It is a fun day for us at Stocktwits.com . We have been working really hard for 6 months thinking through the features and design that would make people that love talking about stocks in real-time go WOW. We are receiving some great feedback.
This tweet made my year from someone I have not ever met:
@MrOpportunistic : I love the new Stocktwits. It is like @howardlindzon took heaven and stocks and combined the too and out came this. Thank you so much.
I would add that it was mostly Chris, Soren, Phil, Justin, Shawn, Dustin, Leigh, Jeremy, and Tadas that have made the site features and design what it is today.
So – what are my favorite features?
1. We have expanded the ability for users to filter the stream. New users need to find the information they want fast. We now have equities/futures/options /forex/futures/suggested and many deeper segment within equities right at your fingertips.
2. You can now BLOCK people that you don’t want to hear so you DO NOT have to rely on just our taste. You can be your own Stocktwits moderator to continually improve your personal experience. Here is the link .
3. On Abnormal Returns today we launched threaded stories AND the ability for people to submit links to their posts or the posts/articles of others to help our algorithms and curators find the most timely and important market and stock related articles in real time.
4. POP OUT Stocktwits.tv is a cool way to experience our investing/trading channel. The button is on our main page. We are working hard towards EIGHT hours than 24 hours of original daily programming and the first true idea video network on the web.
5. Pop Out Streams. This is a great way to help you focus just on the streams that you need, especially great around earnings announcements and other news events.
I believe that the Stocktwits Desktop is the ultimate way to experience Stocktwits and Twitter together, but the web is my home for the most part and I am happy to have all the functionality that I had with Desktop even if the visual experience is a little different.
I put this short video together on Friday to help people see all the functionality of the new sites working together.
Here is a shorter version that Sunny put together with some key features and the sign up process:
There are A LOT of new features and goodies coming to make the experience better across many platforms. PLEASE, PLEASE let us know in the comments what we can do to keep making the features better and the community stronger.
There IS risk despite the risk free trade available to banks and the smart folks willing to borrow to their eyeballs with cheap money.
If I knew what it was and when it would happen, I would share it.
The housing bubble was predicted by EVERYBODY, yet Michael Lewis says maybe 20 people made money off it. That’s pretty insane seeing that almost 2 trillion was lost.
Enjoy the tape and the easy money, but know it will end extremely bad for most.
As I was getting the grey removed from my hair today, I started thinking about Nadsaq 5,000. I mean…all those Nasdaq points and not one good hair or aging solution…
It has truly been an amazing 10 years since Nasdaq 5,000 in March 2000. It was a pretty amazing two years leading up to that as well.
I started my small hedge fund in June, 1998 and knew amazingly little. I can’t believe how little I know 12 years later.
Ten years from now, I will have no hair on my head and cabbage size patches in my nose and ears and time will be my enemy.
In January of 2000 I invested in a Q round of Cars Direct. A sure thing. It’s finally public and I am still down 90 percent. Time just makes that pig hurt more. As part of that same deal, I HAD to invest in Viva.com. It was the horse with three legs and it should have died a horrible death. It became Rent.com and was purchased by Ebay for $450 million in cash after almost shutting down in 2001. I am a genius and time can’t stop me biiitches.
I could go on but it would cut into my Twitter time.
There is only one lesson…stay in the game. Yutz’s like me are surviving and thriving.
I get so many questions from people that say they are beginners and they always seem so confused. I generally tell them that I wish I knew than what I knew now, which is to keep it simple and find a mentor.
The markets can be very complicated…or insanely simple. The hardest part of investing is keeping it simple. The second hardest part is finding someone to help you keep it simple and than someone else to back that person up and so on….
I love reading about the economy and the markets, but for the time spent, I might have been better off as a lawyer just billing my time .
For all the beginners and those looking for a fresh start, this post is for you.
Here are ten rules to follow to enjoy the Stock Market:
1. You are not privy to inside information. Ignore tips.
2. If you are investing fake money or money you cannot afford, you should be working to earn and save enough money to do it with money you can afford to invest with.
3. Once you have enough money to invest (5-10 individual stocks) just start. Pull the freaking trigger. Feel the rush.
4. STOP doing it for the rush.
5. If you are going to invest, keep your costs as low as possible. Be cheap.
6. Learn to recognize healthy markets. I define healthy as hundreds of uptrending stocks with institutional support. Stocks trading above $15-$20 with volume of 500,000 shares or more. I want to fish when/where fish are jumping in the boat.
7. Read less about stocks and markets. A daily check at an aggregator like AbnormalRetrums.com is truly all you need to stay ‘cocktail party’ smart.
8. Prune Prune Prune…NEVER get to the point where you dread looking at your statement. NEVER. Find a backup to hold you accountable. Find another.
9. Keep a journal, blog, Stocktwits account..something to keep you even more honest with at least yourself. You will invest better.
Not sure if I missed something so please chime in with your thoughts so I can fill in a tenth….
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