Where did the wise-cracking Net stock-pickers go?
LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) — Stock market disarray has silenced one of the Internet's most consistent voices: the scores of amateur investment "pundits" who flocked to online message boards with their own brand of financial advice. Discussion groups dedicated to stocks — a reliable cache of odd-ball tips during the bull market run — have grown eerily quiet since the glory days. The Net has now become home to a hard core of wiseacres, bemoaning slumping markets and slipping in advice for good measure.
Frequented by investors with varying levels of experience, "stock boards" serve up a mixed bag of investment advice, heated rants and often humorous observations.
They became wildly popular in 1999 and 2000 as stock markets soared and individual stock pickers enthusiastically hunted the backwaters of the Net for whispers of the next big thing.
Message boards even turned ordinary people into celebrities. During the dot-com boom, Manhattan burrito seller-turned stock picker "Tokyo Joe" Park had a loyal following that hung on his every message board posting.
But with faith in the world's global stock markets waning, enthusiasm for posting to the boards has fizzled too.
Recently, with New York's Dow Jones Index, London's FTSE 100 and Paris's CAC-40 all yo-yoing to multiyear lows, only a hardcore gaggle of investors sounded their dismay.
"I fear for this economy — big time," was one remark that summed up the mood on misc.invest.stocks, one of the most popular stock boards on the Net in its heyday.
Please, no more gloom
Not surprisingly, the doom and gloom is denting the popularity of financial Web sites, which attracted a dedicated following of online traders during the boom years.
Traffic to British, French and German personal finance Web sites dropped sharply between May and June, according to Internet measurement firm NetValue.
NetValue reported the aggregate number of unique monthly visitors to the top seven UK financial information sites, including Oanda.com, Thisismoney.com and Xe.com, fell 11%, from 1.7 million in May to 1.5 million in June.
The number of users heading to U.S.-based online trading sites, including etrade.com, Ameritrade.com and Schwab.com, also tailed off in the first four months of 2002, according to Web measurement firm Nielsen NetRatings.
Wanted: Mature postings
While fewer Europeans ostensibly are using the Net for financial advice, those that are have changed their focus, no longer looking for a hot investment tip. "It's sort of grown up to some extent," said Stuart Watson, editor of The Motley Fool UK, one of the oldest investment sites on the Web.
Share tips on the Fool's discussion boards are more sporadic. Instead, users discuss investment strategies, home refinancing and property potential, he said. "The talk has turned to all aspects of managing your money."
Watson added that traffic levels to the site have remained at or near the bull market level two years ago, a far cry from the breath-taking growth that sites like the fool.com experienced in the late 1990s.
Sadly, those with the fortitude to stick it out in the markets and live to tell about it on the boards appear to have lost their sense of humor.
On Tuesday morning when the markets hit their lowest levels in years, a few chimed in on misc.stocks.invest with illuminating questions and comments: "How low will it go?" "It's a bloodbath, really bad," and "What in God's name is going on with the markets?"
When markets improved mid-week, few were convinced that recovery was at hand, as a poster calling himself "A Modern Caveman" put it. "Just clear the markets to ZERO and start over... that would fix it," he wrote.
Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited.
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