WSJ Covers Web 2.0 Social Networking Sites for Investors

I'm sure Dave, the founder of StockTickr is thrilled to get his site written up in the Wall Street Journal. (You heard it here, from me, first way back in 2005!) The Journal has an article in today's issue titiled "A New Way to Rate Stock Tips: Crop of Networking Sites for Investors Track the Performance Of Users' Picks; Finding Your Market Soul Mate". Here's a snippet:

Individual investors are finding new ways to swap stock tips.
A new generation of Web sites has cropped up in recent months designed to help investors share ideas online with others who have similar investment styles, such as which Asian stocks or technology issues offer the best value. Unlike the Internet chat rooms that were popular in the late 1990s, which allowed any anonymous user to post opinions, the latest sites seek to maintain their credibility by rating participants. Users are assigned a score based largely on the performance of their stock picks and the accuracy of their forecasts.

They cover sites like:

Richard from the Move the Markets blog got quoted in the article:

"Trading is a lonely profession," says Richard Todd, a 29-year-old day trader in Dallas, who uses StockTickr. "Serious, active full-time traders tend to flock to sites like this because it gives us a chance to interact with people and we can talk shop all day."

Edit: Dave informs me that Joey, who's also quoted in the article is none other than fellow blogger Downtown Trader.

Second Edit: In related news, StockPickr just did a deal with TheStreet.com Loads of coverage for this sector today. When it rains, it pours.

7 Comments

Dave | January 3, 2007 9:01 AM

Thanks, Mike! Don't forget Downtowntrader (Joey Fundora) who was quoted first thing in the article.

howard lindzon | January 3, 2007 9:05 AM

Congrats Dave - lots of hard work gets appreciated - thats cool

downtowntrader | January 3, 2007 7:57 PM

Damn, I need to get me a copy of that:d
Seriously though, congrats to Dave on the positive mention.

DT (Joey)

Roger | January 4, 2007 12:43 PM

I think this social stock-picking garbage is a train wreck waiting to happen when I first discovered it this summer. I critiqued both the companies and the concepts at Information Arbitrage http://www.informationarbitrage.com/2006/08/social_networks.html. May be the force be with those who play this game.

Investor Five | January 4, 2007 5:27 PM

Roger,
Why do you say that? Is it really worse than some magazine, newspaper, or analyst pumping up some stock?

fundamentalinvestor | January 5, 2007 3:26 PM

There is a new site that was recently launched called InvestorFace.com. WSJ didn't mention them cause they are too new, but very very good.

InvestorFace is a FREE online community designed to find, review and share investment ideas.

Here is some info from www.InvestorFace.com About Us page:
Great investment ideas are rare and hard to come by. Often times, many investors aren't sure where to begin their search for an investment idea. Financial newspapers, magazines, online articles, Wall Street analyst research or just tips from a broker are the resources that investors have traditionally used in making their investment decisions.

We believe that there is a huge untapped resource of unique and potentially profitable investment ideas that one could get from an online investment community. There is a wealth of information that you can learn from other investors by sharing insight and knowledge. That is why we created InvestorFace!

InvestorFace is all about user powered content, meaning that everything on this site is submitted by user/investor community. After you submit your investment idea, others will read it, rate it and respond to it. If they think that your investment recommendation adds value and provides quality insight, they will promote your idea to the top of the page for thousands of other investors to see.

Each idea/recommendation that you submit on InvestorFace will receive a score that will be based on the quality of your recommendation. Your score will be constantly recalculated with every new vote/comment that you receive. Our users decide what your total score will be - we have no control over it.

investorjoe | February 14, 2007 6:52 AM

To fundamentalinvestor: stop trying to blatantly advertise your site, that's really sad. fyi, it's not very very good either.