Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.
There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.
I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.
Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.
I get really annoyed with bloggers that keep throwing stock picks around, there's one in particular but I won't say who (check the Yahoo link Mike gave).
For me I see my blog as a tool, a way to record my actions, thoughts and ideas. If anyone is interested in reading these things thats up to them but I won't try to convince or sell them anything. Traders who blog and spam their picks on yahoo or other chat boards are obviously trying to market themselves to gain hits on their site or pump/dump a stock they have.
When I first started trading and reading blogs I found it very easy to be influenced. After I realized this I changed my perception of them and decided to stick to my plan and trade the way I understand and feel comfortable with.
I think even if you disclose your positions and provide disclaimers, people will still be foolhardy and follow blindly.
Let me first say my stock blog is not a pump and dump site which seems to be implied here. We might trade 1% of the stocks listed on the site on a weekly basis. My site is for informational purposes and anyone that invests or trades should do so at their own financial risk. Anyone trading should always do their own research on a company before investing or trading.
Just because we post a stock on a yahoo message board and tell people a particular security is on our site does not mean we have a position in the company. 99% of the time we have no position.
When Mike and other bloggers start disclosing all their positions we will do the same. We believe disclosing our positions would be a premium feature that people should pay for. Back in 2004 I found Trader Mike's site through a link on a yahoo message board. Back then I saw a link to his site posted quite frequently.
Gekko
"Gekko",
As I told you last night when you IM'ed me, I'm not accusing you of anything. I made no specific mention of you or your site. If your site and your Yahoo ID happen to show up repeatedly when one searches the Yahoo message boards on the words "blog stock" or "blogspot" that's no fault of mine.
I'm sure you can find several dozen links to my site in the Yahoo message boards going back the 2+ years that I've had this site. You may even find a handful that I posted myself but the vast majority of them were posted by others.
As for disclosure, when I was swing trading I always disclosed what I was trading if I held the position over-night. It's not practical to do so with intraday positions. But I hope that it's very clear that just about every stock I ever post on my site is a potential trading candidate for me. But even if I wanted to pump & dump I'd have a very hard time doing it with the types of stocks that i trade and post about.
Excuse me if I find this a little ridiculous, but it is. I too would like to imagine the whole world is waiting breathlessly for my stock picks, but it's just not true and I'm not that delusional. The only tipster that can move stocks is Cramer, and that's only because he has a national tv show. Go ahead and reveal your positions, the $10 trillion stock market can handle it.
Billyjoe,
I basically agree with you. But there are a ton of people reading the Yahoo message boards, so somebody posting in there has a potential international audience. However, my point wasn't that anybody was attempting to pump & dump, it's that some of that posting activity could easily be perceived that way, by oh, I don't know, the SEC for example. And I think that's a place where nobody wants to go.