interesting aricle about message boards, silicon investor :
Most financial message boards on the Internet are filled with irrelevant
chatter, but there are some pockets of community and civilized discussion
if you know where to look. To help you find them, a guided tour of the
Web's 4 dominant investment chat sites is provided: 1. Silicon Investor
(www.techstocks.com), 2. Motley Fool (boards.fool.com), 3. Raging Bull
(www.ragingbull.com), and 4. Yahoo! (messages.yahoo.com/yahoo/business_and_finance).
Copyright Time Incorporated Sep 1999
Full Text:
SOMEBODY'S TALKING ABOUT YOUR STOCKS ONLINE. TAKE OUR TOUR TO FIND OUT
WHERE.
[IMAGE ILLUSTRATION]
Visit any financial message board on the Net, and you may feel like you've
stepped out of the bus terminal and into the streets of some teeming, unfamiliar
city. Where do you go first? How do you get acquainted with the locals?
And who's the. freak named Food Stamps in a Bodybag screaming "Awesome
earnings run!!!"?
Most boards are filled with irrelevant chatter, but there are some pockets
of community and civilized discussion if you know where to look. To help
you find them, follow us on a guided tour of the Web's four dominant investment
chat sites, then head to www.money.com/contents for a more detailed interactive
guide with additional help and links to where the action is.
SILICON INVESTOR (www.techstocks.com)
Members: 120,000. Daily posts: 20,000.
Best discussion topics: Most large-cap Nasdaq stocks.
Lay of the land: Nicknamed SI by its users, Silicon Investor is the upscale
neighborhood in town, attracting a high percentage of advanced investors
and active traders. Anyone can read the messages for free, but to post
your own thoughts you have to pay ($200 lifetime, $60 half-year). The fee
may give SI an elitist air, but it's just steep enough to deter the less
serious from joining, and many discussion threads are earnest indeed. "Stocks
go down ultimately for fundamental reasons," writes dppl, the founder of
the popular Technical Analysis for Shorts and Longs thread. "But these
reasons are often foreshadowed by technical indications [that] can show
the writing on the wall before the wall is even visible."
Highlights: Not surprisingly, considering the site's address, tech discussions
are by far the most popular forums. Some, like Dell, Intel and Compaq,
have attained near legendary status, thanks to the variety and intelligence
of their posts. But there are also good forurns that are not focused on
individual stocks, such as Market Gems, with its bent toward short-term
trading, or Ask Michael Burke, where a guy named, yep, Michael Burke, opines
on subjects ranging from economics to John Travolta.
Fitting in: Like a gated community, SI quickly escorts rule breakers out
of town. Those who violate the site's hallowed Terms of Use by posting
advertisements or abusive or obscene comments get booted without a refund.
It's probably no accident, then, that unlike at most message sites, many
participants here feel comfortable enough to post under their real names
rather than kooky handles.
Warning: Even the best neighborhoods have back alleys. You should avoid
the $5-and-under forums not only here but wherever you travel, since those
areas tend to attract users more interested in pumping stocks than analyzing
them. |
