Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Q&A on SI's New Feature: Investor Sentiment -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Busby who wrote (33)	1/9/2003 4:34:16 PM
From: Edscharp	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82

John Busby, I might take this investment sentiment thing seriously if you had a panel of 50 prominent brokers who were utilizing their considerable knowledge and intuitions to make comment about a variety of companies. Instead, this endeavor you are attempting seeks, for the most part, the opinions of lay investors who have not the experience nor expertise to validly assess financial statements, stock reports and press releases much less a sudden shift in market conditions. Furthermore, as noted elsewhere, you have a small community here at SI and therefore a very small sampling of opinions for each stock. Not only is this unrepresentative, but it would be quite easy for a small group of persons to skew the results for their own purposes. What is the value of a small sampling by non-professional investors really worth? Do you believe this would have any predictive value at all? I'm reminded of what investor sentiment must have been during the height of the technology boom. I bet the bulls predominated right up to the moment the bottom fell out of the market. You made the point about biases in press releases and financial statements. Fair enough, sometimes biases and downright dishonesty do creep into these things. On the other hand, my bet is the majority of companies with earnings make an earnest attempt an honest reporting. I don't see how you can compare these types of biases, an intentional or unintentional deception to ones stockholders, to the kind of biases people will express informally and anonymously over the internet. Investors with some savvy will ignore your investor sentiment reports. Unfortunately, some lost investors will take the report seriously. They'd be much better off watching Louis Rukeyser once a week.

To: John Busby who wrote (33)	1/10/2003 4:32:02 PM
From: LAWRENCE C.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82

John, 1. This is a vote like research analyst votes not a poll. It would be useful to know how many votes are used for each time period. Similar to how many analysts in analysts forcasts. 2. It's an interesting experiment. It would show optimism vs. pessimism of the participants. The amount of usefulness could vary from index to index or stock to stock depending on how close the voters come to actual prices. Throwing out the high and low values would encourage voters to try and be accurate so their vote is counted. How many high and low values do you throw out is a tougher question? Only time will tell whether this feature is useful. I assume the forecast is for the last stock market day of the month.