Oops, looks like we are dangerous people, hanging out in a "dangerous place". Can't wait until those wiser TSCM heads use their IPO$ to deliver us into a "safe, no-cheerlead, no-attack, Cramer-approved chat environment" as promised ;) (from www.thestreet.com):
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The Dangerous World of the Chat Boards
By James J. Cramer
7/12/99 9:06 AM ET
What used to be an interesting forum for intelligent discussion has deteriorated into a place of lies and insults, and Cramer's yearning for the old days.
Chat? I don't go there. Look, I am massively in favor of chat. In fact, I got the idea for TheStreet.com from the convivial discussions I used to go to in Motley Fool, which, when it started, I loved.
Chat was where people coalesced to beat Wall Street. It was where you could cut through the hype and find out whether a company's technology really was any good. It was where you could swap ideas with an engineer from Ameritech (AIT:NYSE) or find out whether a chip company really had a revolutionary product.
Now, chat is where I get my head ripped off.
Last Friday, I mentioned that people were buying puts furiously on Knight/Trimark (NITE:Nasdaq). Their brokers told me that it was because of a possible negative article in Barron's. To me, this type of "journalism" has now become a staple for the Web. I don't like it, but it is what people seem to want.
Next thing I know, I am being deluged by people telling me that the Knight/Trimark boards are going nuts with people cursing me.
First of all, what do people know in the Knight/Trimark board that could be of value to begin with? Short of just cheerleading for Knight or bashing Knight, what do they know? Second, I cannot even begin to care about what people say about me on the Knight board or any other board, for that matter. I have been called everything from a liar to a crook to a saint to a communist. Heck, I'm just a guy and a dad. I am not a sinister plot against someone, and I am not attempting to make money off of an offhanded Knight/Trimark comment. I have no position in the name.
I don't care whether the stock goes up or down. I have nothing on the line other than trying to be an honest reporter about what I see and hear.
Finally, I feel so strongly that chat has taken a wrong turn that I have been one of the key people behind the scenes at TheStreet.com trying to come up with a way to have meaningful non-attack, no-cheerleading chat, the way that I remembered in the 1996 Motley Fool, which I loved. So far it has eluded us.
But it is going to happen.
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