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

To: Chief AllPredictive who wrote (43)	1/9/2003 11:21:11 PM
From: Edscharp	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82

Chief, At least I can understand your position on this. You're the guy who is trying to sell this service. As for your interesting reply, I note the following. There are a number of prominent brokers in this country who have established excellent track records. That's who I was talking about. I wasn't referring to every broker or self-proclaimed half-assed analyst that infect these message boards and so many other media sources. I questioned the validity of the opinions possessed by lay investors and you liken my position to the opposition against consumer surveys of the 50's and 60's. Faulty comparison my friend. Those consumer surveys were conducted with thousands of people randomly contacted by the surveying company. I have no problems with surveyers conducting random polls. That's not what your company does. You mention that surveys often use small samples. Again, faulty comparison. If 25 randomly chosen people test-taste Grandma Sadie's Apple-crunch pie and all of them rave about how great it tastes I'll accept the results as valid and go out and buy some of the pie myself. If I learn that those conducting the taste test have selectively hand-chosen 25 participants I can safely assume they are attempting to manipulate the results. You claim that anybody wishing to manipulate results would need multiple accounts. This is untrue. I have seen first hand on numerous message boards clear examples of pump & dumping and short & distorting wherein dozens of traders (admittedly some with multiple identities) descend upon a particular stock and begin 'en masse' a process of disinformation. You don't need one person with multiple identities to manipulate results. You just need a loose association of individuals committed to the same ulterior motive. Finally, to your credit, you ask the folloiwng questions, " Will the sentiment be correlated positively or negatively with actual prices? Will the correlation vary among industries or even individual stocks? We will find out as we go." Anotherwards, you don't know. It's an unproven tool you hope will have benefit. This is exactly what I've been trying to say. For the record, if you re-label your service as "for entertainment purposes only" I will stop posting here.