Briefing.com posted the following late in the day on Wednesday:

15:40 In Play Year-End Wrap-Up

It has been a wild year for the major averages, but careful readers of In Play more than likely have reason to celebrate as the year comes to a close. For example, we flagged the sustained rise in mining stocks beginning with our CDE profile on July 23 (up 258% since then), which was followed by numerous other profiles in the group; we pointed out the rise in little-known groups such as foreign telecoms, beginning with our March 3 summary of Russian cellular stocks (MBT +84%, VIP +90%, GLDN +98% since then) and followed by our NIHD write-up on May 22 (+112%); and over the course of the year we highlighted numerous other sectors, such as the back-from-the-dead Internet, VoIP, and Mad Cow groups. Perhaps our most successful new feature was our series of Micro-Cap, Small-Cap, Volume, and New High Profiles, which flagged many of this year’s top performing stocks before their big moves; examples include MTLG on Jan 21 (+776% since then), FLML on March 21 (+392%), ALVR on April 17 (+359%), and MOBE on May 23 (+340%)… out of the more than 100 stocks we profiled from Jan 1 to June 30, the avg gain is 57%, with over 40 stocks sporting triple-digit gains (we’ve profiled many more since then). Even after November’s rollout of the revamped site, we’re still constantly trying to improve the product and we welcome readers’ feedback. Here’s hoping our readers enjoy a similarly successful 2004 — whether trading long, short, or a bit of both!

This led to a discussion between myself and my friend Duru. This is Duru’s letter to Briefing.com which sums up our reaction to this post perfectly:

Dear Briefing,

Over the past year or more, I have come to really appreciate your “In Play” service (I typically view it through ETrade). However, some of your
end-of-year commentary struck me as a bit odd. In that summary, you claimed to have made your subscribers/readers a ton of money from picks that doubled, tripled, etc… I find this claim odd because I have always thought of you as a price/volume/news alert service and not a trade recommending service. Indeed, I cannot think of a single time when one of your alerts came with a trading recommendation - e.g. go long, go short, and hold position for the short, medium, or long-term. Without such recommendations, I cannot understand your claims of making readers money. I cannot even make sense of the “return” you claim to have generated with your picks. For example, are you suggesting that all price/volume/momentum break-outs be bought and held to the end of the year? How about some shorts? Or do you only recommend going long?

Your alert on FALC today is an excellent example. I find the alert extremely informative, but nowhere in it did I see a trading recommendation. Yet, if FALC manages to survive as a big mover to the end of the year, you will lump it in with the rest of your successful “calls” of 2004.

Finally, you did not list the losing picks of the year. Without a more balanced picture, it is hard for me to give much credibility to any claim to the “accuracy” of your picks.

Again, I want to emphasize that I find your service extremely valuable, but some clarification on these claims of implicit returns would help a lot of us understand better what kind of service you believe you are providing to us.

Thank you.

I’ll add that Briefing’s In Play service is invaluable to me. I’ve used it since before I started trading full time, and will continue to do so. But they had to be called out on that boasting.