Aside from my parents and a few friends from “real life” the overwhelming majority of the folks who read this blog are people who found me through my association with Stocktwits. Before I go any further allow me to say the following, I came across StockTwits in February of this year by a recommendation from my friend Horace Kent, a contributor at the Online Traders Forum (OTF) http://www.onlinetradersforum.com , I had never used Twitter before that and in fact had never participated in any social media website. With the exception of the folks who posted on OTF I did not know any of the people in the StockTwits community.
Now after six months I’d like to share my feelings with you. If you’re expecting this to be a puff piece, you’re gonna be unsurprised. I am really in the honeymoon stage now and am still quite amazed at this social media concept in general and at StockTwits in particular.
I have had the opportunity to meet and become friends with two of the three guys that are the braintrust behind StockTwits, Howard Lindzen ( http://twitter.com/howardlindzen ) and Phil Pearlman ( http://twitter.com/ppearlman ) and they have afforded me the outlet on StockTwitsTV to share my opinions and express my inner hamminess, and in fact it was an intern at StockTwits who obtained the aiki14.com web address for me to host this blog.
Above I referred to the StockTwits community. A year ago the concept of an “online community” was not part of my lexicon, and it was recently brought to my attention by an old dear friend that I derided her back in the day for believing that any of the words on the screen were written by actual people. Images of drooling knuckledraggers, pedophiles, and predators, typing with one hand in chat rooms, or hyper geeks conversing about cobol programming was about the extent of my feelings on the matter.
StockTwits has opened up my mind on this matter. In the last few months I have had the chance to meet many of the contributors, and hopefully many of you reading this blog. I have also met quite a few folks who contribute to the blogosphere. My experience in this regard is overwhelmingly positive and now number many of these folks as friends.
Two things that really amaze me about these people:
The generosity they exhibit with regard to their time and information
The high level of discourse that can be found
If you watch the video’s on StockTwitsTV other than the one’s I do, you’ll see a bunch of fellows who are offering an amazing product, asking nothing in return, which requires an amazing level of skill and time to put together. This is actionable information that can make or save you money, produced by guys who have proven track records. When you compare it to the dreck offered in the mainstream media, it is nothing short of incredible. Give me an honest guy with a webcam giving me the straight dope, over a glossy overproduced bunch of dopes any day.
Yesterday I posted a list of people I follow on Stocktwits that during the previous week made me think (no easy task because I am constitutionally resistant to it). On several topics I was either prompted to give an opinion on a complicated subject, or my opinion on a subject was challenged in a very articulate and well thought out manner. What followed in each case was a conversation involving several individuals that was, in my opinion, intelligent, genuine, and courteous. Compare this to the degenerative crosstalk of book talking ideologues which always seems to end in a shouting match on the “mainstream media”.
Many of the folks who regularly post to the StockTwits stream have blogs or websites not affiliated with StockTwits, and I would never have found them if I hadn’t found them there. You can find some of the best information available anywhere among these outlets and I urge you to check out the offerings by the folks you see on StockTwits. The quality of these blogs and sites ranges from the tee shirt selling, country music singing, cheesy book writing, self promoting swindler to the professional money manager with legitimate and sterling credentials, so I refer you back to my earlier blog on Bias for help in determining which are worth your time.
Wow Jim, this StockTwits thing seems perfect, a virtual St. Thomas More’s Utopia.
Ok, I deserved that, looking back on this essay, it’s clear I am a StockTwits fanboy, but lets have a look at a couple negatives:
There are, despite the herculean efforts of the aforementioned brain trust, still folks of nefarious character that leak through. Individuals who, for reasons of psychiatric disfunction ranging from the need for an ego boost to out and out dementia, greed, or just a desire to see others as miserable as them, post insulting, vitriolic, misleading, self serving, inane, insane, or bizarre tweets. I don’t think a week has gone by since I have been posting where Phil Pearlman hasn’t had to send me a DM (direct message) telling me to tone it down or catch my breath (my particular psychiatric disorder appears to be a predilection towards argumentativeness).
The thing that sets me off the most are the folks who post claims of success without any backing up of the claim. In some egregious cases this is in conjunction with an attempt to lure you into a paid service that they offer. If you follow the stream for a while you will see the claims of glory from these folks who never seem to make a bad trade or an incorrect prediction. If the market continues to go up, I guarantee you will see more and more of these folks as bull markets breed “geniuses” in great numbers. An easy way to filter these guys out is to never accept any claim of a success that wasn’t posted prior to or at the time of the trade or prediction, in fact, assume any such claim as an attempt to sucker you into something. Maybe as simple as gaining your respect, or as nefarious as getting your money. Double your suspicion if the individual is selling something, if the guy who’s bragging about “having to take a 10% profit on $F” and that his long term portfolio is “up 314% on $F” and he sells a stock picking or investment service you must conclude he’s a con man.
As intelligent adults we filter out the bad and make use of the good. The large majority of the folks who stick around and the information they provide on StockTwits falls into the latter category. I have found my association with the community to be extremely rewarding and I have used information I obtained on Stocktwits to the benefit of my personal trading and to the benefit of my professional trading and investing. That is a profound thing as I see it, and a thing of great value. It is also a rare thing indeed in this world.
As a regular feature of this blog, I am going to keep a record of the Tweets and Tweeters that have caused me to think during the week. Things that make me think, or even better challenge my thinking on a subject are of great value to me. I will post those things here on the weekend and hopefully they will also be of value to you.
Aiki14
