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.

SI - Site Forums : Silicon Investor - Welcome New SI Members! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AugustWest who wrote (4645)	3/6/1999 11:32:00 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32883

The current (3/23/99) issue of PC Magazine has a large on-line investing guide. Here's a snippet that pertains to SI: Financial Discussion Sarah L. Roberts-Witt Opinions. Everyone's got one, especially with regard to money and where to put it. Nowhere is this more perfectly illustrated than in the online financial chat rooms and message boards that densely populate the Internet. You need to check out what the word on the Web is, not just to find companions but because a critical mass of opinion can affect the performance of a stock. At the same time, you need to be careful, because these sites are full of touts and worse, pumping or dumping on certain stocks without revealing their agenda. We looked at six financial discussion sites for this story and participated in conversations ranging from intelligent to obscene. The irreverent yet friendly attitude of The Motley Fool's founders, brothers David and Tom Gardner, permeates this site (www.motleyfool.com). Its message boards rank low on the intimidation-and-insult scale and high for pleasantness and practicality. Motley Fool is chock-full of pragmatic, action-oriented advice on a broad range of financial topics, from capital gains taxes to investing. It should be the site of choice for regular folks. Another top-of-the-line site is The Raging Bull (www.ragingbull.com). It's geared solely toward the individual investor, and its home page is populated with news stories and top posts from its hundreds of message boards. Our favorite feature is its single-company boards, which are extremely easy to find and offer instant clicks to real-time quotes, earnings charts, and posts related exclusively to each board's designated corporation. As you might guess, Silicon Investor (www.siliconinvestor.com) focuses on the world of technology, both computer and biotech. For the $120 annual subscription fee, you can access message boards and features such as its company profiles database. Rambling through the various boards and posts to find topics in which we were interested was daunting; luckily, the site has a powerful search engine. The tone on SI boards is pretty savvy, and a fair number of people seem to be on and posting messages throughout the trading day. It's really worth the subscription fee only if you're a day trader, though. As usual, AOL has it all. The Personal Finance channel (keyword: Personal Finance) boasts a boatload of investing forums and informal chat rooms, as most others do. Its key differentiator is its slew of live scheduled chats, so you can talk with finance experts for hours. Yahoo! Finance (quote.yahoo.com) covers all the bases with its chat room, message boards, and reams of news and corporate background data. Its finance chat room isn't our favorite, though, since the conversation often lurches between stocks-and-market talk and thinly veiled come-ons. The message boards are much more intelligent, even though their tone tends toward snipes and swipes. Message board beachhead Deja News (www.dejanews.com) culls Usenet investing forums focused on futures and options, mutual funds, and stocks. We found the participants quite "flameboyant"; a rough estimate puts the numbers at one decent post for every ten. Also, beware the prolific number of posts from fledgling companies hoping to raise funds. zdnet.com - Jeff P.S. Full article starts here: zdnet.com