The only thing more staggering than DBC's poor overall rating in the linked stock analysis page is that they recently won the 5th annual stocks and commodities "Reader's Choice" awards! How? Read on.
Before anyone bows down to Data Broadcasting's winning the 1997 Stocks and Commodities award(s) for "Best Real Time Data", and the other "winner" categories, the uninformed reader should get the truth as to how the recipients of these awards are identified.
Years ago, it was a well known truth that Data Broadcasting Corporation chose to give it's code away to any and all developers of charting and graphing packages. DBC correctly envisioned that if they were to do this, the chart companies would be obliged to cross-sell DBC, in order to make the complete package useable. Sometimes the charting vendor advertising in S & C is the ONLY company who is compatible with DBC's Signal or BMI data-or one of a very small selection. What? DBC owns BMI? DBC then began to publish a catalog-giving names, addresses,and breakdowns on the studies that could be performed-and essentially advertising these x-brand chart vendors.
Stocks and Commodities magazine is a technical magazine-with lots of advertisements from charting and graphing vendors. When a reader sees a charting ad, they call. Then the big question comes up: What data vendor is best? Their limited answer: DBC! Result? Strategic, symbiotic selling.
Then, the survey begins. S & C magazine offers survey cards to it's readers-ONLY ITS READERS. Unfortunately, it has been suggested that a LARGE amount of S & C's readers are DBC customers, because of the charting package they bought. Who has the best data? Try and ask that of a real stock, option or commodity professional and see what they say. 9600-56kb. Most professional quote VENDORS wouldn't even CONSIDER 56kb. How about "quote filtering?" That's where they literally remove quotes from their datastream so that they can attempt to stay "Real Time"(def: anything under 10 minutes off the actual trade). It is hardly a suprise that DBC has won this award every year since it began-1992. Who else? Everyone knows Data Broadcasting has unmatched speed and quality of data, right? Just ask any anyone (who reads S & C). Stocks and Commodities magazine should consider changing their survey and information gathering guidelines. Is DBC really better than Quotron? Bloomberg? S & P Comstock? PCQuote? CQG? Quote.com? Isn't it interesting that in the same year that they received all the controversial press over a lawsuit related to the speed of their "REAL-TIME" data, they get the award for the best data?!! I don't recall reading a comparison of the quantity of data-ie # of symbols delivered. In my mind, speed and quality/quantity of data are definetly an open subject. The only difference between 1992 and now is that the average consumer is much more informed. Unless they incorporate a huge upgrade in speed/technology, and a discontinuation of quote filtering, I don't think DBC can substantiate the claim that they are the "industry leader in providing real-time quotes". As the competent analysis in Silicon Investor states: SELL.
GTTaylor |
