The iPad Stock Market…Transparency is the NEW ‘Alpha’

I dunno, I think we've seen some pretty cool shit come out in the financial web over the last couple of years. Covestor being my favorite but even watching what Think or Swim has done on the options front and what Mint.com did on the PF side shows that we've definitely progressed beyond Fool/TheStreet (which were quite frankly a regurgitation of the offline newsletter business -- even their sales/landing pages were simply rehashed direct mail pieces).

I guess those StockTwits guys have been doing some interesting stuff too ;)

-Wayne

Mint is cool but that's personal finance and quicken did the legwork.

As an investor in covestor I agree but it is still very heavy.

I do agree with your last point - namely that transparency is the new alpha. As long as the vice-grip that Bloomberg holds on the sell side, namely the proprietary messaging platform (used and loved by the buy side), the proprietary VWAP calculation (which the buy side depends on) and the benefit of a well-run and well-oiled machine (vis a vis Thonson Reuters), innovation will likely be small steps in short bursts.

That being said, i'm fairly sure you're right about touch computing changing the game in finance, but i'm skeptical as to whether our friend Steve will be the right platform for that. I'm tempted to guess that aside from Android and an inevitable Windows-Tablet, Bloomberg's future and that of other market data juggernauts (Thomson Reuters, FactSet, even eSignal amd TradeStation) will be in touch as well.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out (and where StockTwits ultimately finds itself in the mix).

but it finally forces the issue. three years from now, we will have better
hardware and software tools from all the players. that's good.

I believe $AAPL has done some great stuff in the last decade. Was a fan, was long, would probably still be if the market hadn't worked itself into a very silly lather. I think the iPod and the iPhone both carved out new spaces in "old" markets.

But, um, no. Now I could say that that I didn't like that hipster commercial, or that Steve and his super-cool thingie have no connection to--and therefore zero importance whatsoever at--the Oscars, but that would just be me being my usual grumpy ol' self.

If you believe that computers are devices on which people express themselves and get work done, with words as well as pictures and finger-painting, then you know this device is a massive fail. If you don't, if you believe computers are a lot like video games or other fun toys, then our country's future is a massive fail, because there is a shit-ton of work to get done in the short term, and mega-shit-tons to get done in the intermediate, and all of it depends on our IMPROVING our ability to COMMUNICATE, not our ability to surf the web and our photo albums more intuitively. I have never seen an iPhone user--and living in Brooklyn, there's more $AAPL in the water than fluoride--opt to work on his phone over his laptop. Or, for that matter, play on it.

Regardless, it's a device covering covered ground with a snappy new map. We think we're out of the woods once again, back to toyland and the cultural equivalent of the heroin nod rather than work and repair--a state in which Americans can discover endless new maps of covered ground as if they were new worlds--and the last two times we've done that, we've just dug ourselves deeper in. Without massive financial sector seizure etc. etc. zzzzzzz.

April will feel a lot like every other month for the last couple years, except for those of sufficient disposable means and insufficient preoccupation with reality to find themselves engorged over a 3G Etch-a-Sketch for arrested tweens.

whoa...you are TOO grumpy. steve tells a good story which most of hollywood
stopped doing a LONG time ago that makes steve the best guy there tonight.

you need to separate smart from investing. I deserve to be rich if thinking
about trading and investing and working hard were all that mattered.

markets and stocks just do what they do.

lets just disagree on this one.

Perhaps I am. Nonetheless: much of what I had to say had nothing to do with smarts, or investing, but with the utility and value of a device people have been calling game-changing for about 9 months more than it existed publicly.

That has nothing to do with storytelling, intelligence, or investing (though might inspire some speculation). That's just plain ol' hype and hucksterism. I don't see the connection to the financial web at all, mainly because I don't see the work you're doing in something like Stocktwits as hypeful or hucksterized, but straightforward. Is it like investing, or like smart? Seems to me both.

But sure, we can disagree.

“The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.”

- William Gibson

Distribution is where StockTwits may come in.

Exactly.