Subject: a housekeeping message re: tipsters and picksters, not I of each
Hi Mike, and Thread,
For a variety of reasons, I refrain from making stock market and individual company stock projections. I also refrain from pretending that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to making stock market projections.
When asked to do so, even by a "prospective" client or the press, I will and have recused myself for ethical reasons. Especially when the purpose for the requested opinion is for reassurance concerning some speculation du jour, or for skewing the scales of decision for the asking party by pushing a buy or sell decision over the top.
But, to do some technical analysis of a company's strategies, or of a product or service they are offering? Well, that's another story. That's the business I'm in. But this board is not about my business, as much as it is about discussing emerging technologies and the evolution of things.
There's no shortage of gurus out there today whose bread and butter incomes derive from seeing. And while I think that most of them are full of crap, they remain available in their tents for the price of a transaction, just the same.
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Yesterday I spoke with a reporter from a financial publication whose parent organization you need to subscribe to, for a fee. Hint: they have three letters in their abbreviated name.
He had been trying to get me for a week, after we exchanged some cursory emails last Friday which merely served as introduction. Earlier in the day, even before I had a chance to speak with the reporter for the first time to find out what this was all about, their photographer tracked me down (through the miracles of call forwarding) at a client's site, stating that they "needed" to come over to my office as quickly as possible to do a photo shoot of me. Quick, because they were running up against deadline.
How do these things happen?
It turns out that through the good graces of someone in SI management I was recommended to this pub to be one of several subjects in an article that addresses "the hidden stock board gurus of the Internet," or something like that. The bright ones who lead their followers to riches. "Stock tipsters," in words camouflagic, covering a diversity of breeds.
When I finally learned what this was all about I advised him that I was indeed very flattered, but that I was not the man they wanted for this article. I sensed, after another minute of talking, that I was being pressed to be that man, in not so many words. But I declined to give him the impressions that would lock the opportunity up for me, and we both agreed at some point that I was not the right man for this job. But the point is, I could have been if I wanted to. Which I didn't.
I wished him well in his endeavor to find others who could see better than I. He rattled off a couple of names that you are all familiar with, names of boardsters both here in SI and elsewhere who he would pursue.
I told him that if ever he wanted to do an article about an odd ball character who enjoyed practicing a form of fiscal chastity in the midst of an ongoing orgy, to look me up.
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OTOH, if you ask me about Internet telephony service providers in general, or if you want to get specific about a strategy of any particular one, or whether or not any ITSP (no one in particular) could ever make any money with prices falling as precipitously as they are, etc., then that's a different story.
The inferences that you might draw from a discussion such as I just referenced would be more useful to you in making up your own mind than hearing someone project into the unknown, just for the sake of hearing themselves click.
For those who've heard me say this before, please excuse me once again, for I know that this must, by now, sound like a mantra of mine. But, I am still a consultant of the old-fashioned kind. Not too many folks know what that means today in this age of instant gratification, and that's okay with me, too, because it keeps down the competition in my field.
But for a hint of what this actually means, I neither promote nor seek to take away from the merits of any individual company's stock, unless asked to provide an assessment by a client. This holds especially true in public forums. I hope you understand.
Things may change some day, if critical mass materializes elsewhere, causing me to do a role switch. But this is how I operate, today.
Regards, Frank
ps - I ordinarily wouldn't belabor this point the way I just did, but I've been getting an increasing number of PMs and emails asking for stock advice. And as much as I'd like to at times, I don't. |
