TOP CONTRIBUTORS

John Moore

David Turetsky

Isabelle ayel

• Consigliere Call Notes
• Consigliere

'Tuesday 12/16, 6:30pm - 7:30pm EST

• • Attendees: Alan Brochstein, Ronnie Diaz, Bapcha Murty, Brian Anderson
  • Unable to attend: Isabelle Ayel, Davy Bui

Notes

richSOB (David)

richSOB (David): Sorry I can't make the call in realtime. I would not expect that I am the typical Wikinvest user. I do not use the site as a source of primary information or research. On occasion, I will consult a page to fill in a picture where I have already reached an investment decision. For such purposes, where I have an interest in a fullsome discussion, Wikinvest is outstanding. Beyond this, my participation is solely as a contributor. I want the site to succeed. I think it is a great idea. It adds far more meaningful substance than anything I have found on the web and matches the best I have seen in print. It provides background real world context for my quantitative work. The tone of wikinvest is welcoming and unique among such web sites. It is respectful of the reader's intelligence

I have not seen any ads, even when I look for them, so I must conclude that they are unobtrusive. I would recommend a similar style and placement as "wikinvest in the press." Use color and proprietary graphics. Be bold, even playful (I have a considerable marketing and graphics background, including half of a related applied doctorate)

I do almost all of my trading at Interactive Brokers. Very professional. Can handle any kind of long/short complex trade. Good screen presentation and analytics. Earlier I traded at Scottrade. I often trade stock index futures and single stock futures, actively trading from both long and short sides

I do not read analyst reports. I get barebones information from Yahoo Finance and Google Finance. Occasionally I read Microsoft's MoneyCentral for amusement. Analysts recommendations in my view are intellectually bankrupt even while their projections are dressed in facts

Wikinvests principal weekness in my view is in a tendency of writers to tend to try to impress with verbiage, trendy lingo and a flood of facts at the expense of tautness of commentary, and an editorial tendency toward unwillingness to challenge consensus thinking (this may be changing, indeed I may be unfair in this remark). Thoughtful points of view should be acceptable without any requirement to disclose details of methodology. When taken in the aggregate, that should enhance the product

Isayel 05:43, December 16, 2008 (PST)

1- Ads: I was like David...I made an effort to notice them. For me : definitely minimally invasive! I have no experience about ads in wiki or website. I suggest to do more "noise" in social media. I know that "financial circle" hates noise but doing business with information is doing noise. Be present in Twitter stream, in facebook groups, in SlideShares group...will help selling ads.

2- I like the new links in Wikinvest, help a lot to understand concepts and stuff. I suggest to change the home page more often and A LINK back to the home page would be appreciated, I think.

RichSOB [David] 11:03, December 16, 2008 (EDT)

Ohhhhhhhh, you mean the little Google-like ads near the top!!! Now I see some at the bottom too. I mentally shut them out, considered them as links to some other part of wikinvest.com. That is way too unobtrusive!

StreetGeek (Tom)

• • Have you noticed the ads that are now displaying on our site? What do you think about them?
    • I’ve noticed them. They’re not that intrusive.
  • What sites have minimally invasive ads? We are discussing different layouts to pay close attention to placement and user experience.
    • Any site that doesn’t have floating or audio ads is minimally invasive in my opinion. I can’t really comment on new layouts without seeing them.
  • Do you know anyone at a brokerage company that is in marketing? We are looking for creative ways to sell some of our own ads
    • I know plenty of people in search marketing, but none at a brokerage company.
• Who trades commodities?
  • I don’t trade commodities. We are bringing on a materials analyst in a month – he can give you better answers to these questions.
  • Which analyst reports do you read before you make an investment?
    • We prepare analyst reports. I read them just to see what’s out there or if an analyst makes a big call that moves a stock. Since I’m an analyst, I do my own due diligence before making an investment.
  • Where do you find them? What aspects of the reports are most interesting to you and why?
    • Through my brokerage account, subscription data services and through contacts. Model granularity and industry trends are the most useful in these reports. Some product or service insight. A lot of it isn’t interesting because it’s the same across the Street.
  • What questions do the reports fail to answer?
    • Most reports don’t have a detailed model that derives a price target. They are typically reactive to an event (earnings, macro change, etc), rather than a complete overview of the company. The big annual reports have too much information in them – a lot of which isn’t relevant. It’s about getting the right balance in a report.
  • Do the reports you read contain information on future earnings or a consensus forecast for future earnings? How important is this information in your analysis?
    • Short reports contain at least two quarters estimates. It’s important for market reaction around earnings announcements. I think it’s more important for thinly covered companies where estimates and guidance could differ extremely.
  • Would it be helpful to see the analysts rankings of companies to buy, sell and hold on Wikinvest?
    • There are other sources to find this information – star analyst rankings and so forth – so the utility is limited. Brokerages offer this service as well. There are other questions – how would you rank analysts? Earnings accuracy? Stock picks? How is that gauged? The effectiveness of Street analysts is being questioned more and more – I’m not sure there is value.
  • Would you find a side-by-side comparison of historical consensus analyst earnings estimates and actual earnings estimates useful?
    • Again, this information is available via Yahoo! and a number of other sources. It may be useful to integrate this within the WikiCharts so that divergence from estimates and earnings and price movement can better be understood.
  • What about projected 1-yr consensus price target (high, low, median) from a year ago vs. actual stock price.
    • This is a little more interesting, but it would look awfully strange given recently analyst activity taking their numbers down.

AJBCFA (Alan)

• I like the new top level navigation and look forward to reading more new content
• Seeking Alpha had a total site redesign...when you punch in a symbol you can click on articles, news, transcripts. Now there are great ways to look for content quickly - better than yahoo for finding information about a company. I get a daily email from SA for everyone I'm following.
• I don't use RSS feeds even though he writes a blog
• I didn't notice the ads on the site, which is good! I generally don't click on ads when browsing the internet.
• If you don't sell ads - how can you make money? In general, I'm concerned about the economy and providing content for free...
• I'm on the Wikinvest Wire for ab.typepad.com and get some great traffic from that feature
• Likes GEICO ads, but otherwise doesn't see ads in general in print or online media
• Doesn't use the Shelf
• Looking to do some work on titanium (do we cover that?)
• Who would be a trustworthy broker for commodities? We could address that....
• Can we create a community discussions section for this? This can be a area with some shady brokers?
• Wrote a few articles on Gold for Seeking Alpha, getting data for investments (ETFs, contracts, etc)
• As a money manager used to read analyst reports extensively, but does this less so now
• Gets these through Thompson, but most people don't have access
• Pays for his own tools - StockVal (Reuters), they have slimmed down versions, merging into Baseline
• Thinks analyst reports are a contrarian indicator for making an investment decision
• Transcripts on Seeking Alpha, SEC filings, NASDAQ site for information - good information on short interest, background, etc...
• Yahoo has a slimmed down Star Mine (ranks analysts)? Should we do that?
• Stock Val has a good stock screener, Bloomberg screener isn't as good as Stock Val
• Free stock screeners aren't that good because they don't allow manipulating data

Rrdiaz (Ronnie)

• Thinks the new top level navigation will help new users most, but was comfortable with the old nav and will need to spend some time getting adjusted to the change
• Likes predictive text in our search window, uses menus to crawl around
• Some ads are not relevant, but thinks they are not too obtrusive
• Doesn't click on ads when browsing the internet
• Does a financial portal as a longer-term focus diminish the brand?
• Encourage avoiding a top banner - detracts from the look of the site
• Likes Facebook ads, because they are unobtrusive
• Floating ad on the site might be cool.
• Uses the shelf, but could see a float ad there if contextual (small so less obtrusive)
• Doesn't trade commodities, but thinks its interesting
• Is going to explore Commodities now that we have TLB
• More interested in the company directly (looks at the 10K directly) than in analyst reports
• Uses Google finance

richSOB (David)

I don't have any problem at all with the Google ads that are being displayed today, whether they are placed on top, along the side of text, or on the bottom, nor to I have any difficulty where a more noticable font is used. I'm all for it to the extent that it is supportive of the larger wikinvest purpose. I would not be put off by any contrary opinion

ShivKapoor (Shiv)

• Have you noticed the ads that are now displaying on our site?
  • Yes, I did notice them. They look fine.
• What sites have minimally invasive ads? We are discussing different layouts to pay close attention to placement and user experience.
  • I actually find prominent ads generate better advertiser revenue. On the top at the bottom and between post seeks to work well on my site. Only thing to make sure is that ads do not obscure content.
• Where do you do your research? What tools do you recommend and why? What information do those tools provide? Why is that helpful?
  • Mostly look at economic cycles which are driven by economic indicators. Tend to follow fed reserve yield curve, unemployment data, gdp data, inflation data, govt debt data etc. Most reliable source is appropriate government website. I do read several analyst (SP, GS, Credit Suisse) reports too but really focus on finding own indicators which have a predictive edge ahead of the herd; also try and get a handle on fundamentals on a 10 year level to eliminate noise from news flows.
• Have you seen Wikinvest's pages on commodities? What do you think of them? How can they be improved?
  • I actually find the pages very difficult to follow. I think it would be much better to have real time information with links to views. For example have an page with real time prices and then have the news and views. Or a piece of headline news with links to knowledge (concept) and views. I think most people are looking for news and information; when you help them find it and then move on to knowledge content and views it would work. Even a simple quote page with sector & industry performance for the stock listed will work because linked to sector & industry you could have "concepts", "news" & "views".
• What other resources do you recommend for commodities investors?
  • I tend to not trade commodities though I do invest in energy & basic material sectors.
• Which analyst reports do you read before you make an investment? Where do you find them? What aspects of the reports are most interesting to you and why?
• Mostly SP, GS, CS, Valueline, which come from either subscription or via my brokerage accounts. I tend to read them for an "other persons opinion" to see if any issues are highlighted which I have not considered; my main aim to to be aware of as much as possible and to ensure that I have considered (even if I am incorrect) all known issues.
• What questions do the reports fail to answer?
  • Most seem to look only at near term capital preservation. I tend to look for value which is often found when the instinct to preserve capital is high. Most reports thus advocate avoid when I buy and because they are looking near term I do not get a sense of their view over a longer period of time.
• Do the reports you read contain information on future earnings or a consensus forecast for future earnings? How important is this information in your analysis?
  • Yes. Not at all important to me. I tend to never pay for any future growth over and above 3% annual plus inflation. I find statistical modelling based on the prior 15 years gives gives a better feel for average earnings over the future 5 years than analyst expectations.
• Would it be helpful to see the analysts rankings of companies to buy, sell and hold on Wikinvest?
  • Not really.
• Would you find a side-by-side comparison of historical consensus analyst earnings estimates and actual earnings estimates useful?
  • Not really.
• What about projected 1-yr consensus price target (high, low, median) from a year ago vs. actual stock price?
  • Not really. What might be of use is say a 10 year (or more) history of earnings per share, dividend per share, dep & amort per share, capex per share, long term debt per share & total debt per share. Then of course yr high, year low, high PE, low PE, average PE, relative PE (to SP), relative PE (to sector), relative PE (to industry).

richSOB (David)

Make the ads colorful, alive, entertaining, even playful. Stop worrying about minimally invasive. Just be respectful of the overall viewer experience. Great ads can enhance that experience

Prudentinvestor (Toni)

• Ads areminimally invasive. I certainly prefer it this way but I am aware of the need of revenue streams. As long as it does not slow pageloading I am fine.
• Commodities trading:
  • I invest in commodities and producers instead of trading. Average holding period >4 years.

Which analyst reports do you read before you make an investment? I read across the web, from the mainstream guys to the contrarians. From my blog I see that Jim Rogers is getting very popular all over the world. I do not need realtime information.

• Where do you find them? What aspects of the reports are most interesting to you and why?
  • It is all on the web. SeekingAlpha is a good source for out of the box thinking. I am looking for anomalies as everything will return to the main. With companies it is strictly fundamentals and the growth possibilities. My blogroll is full with high quality opinionators.
• What questions do the reports fail to answer?
  • There were (as in 1929) only a handful of economists that correctly forecasted the present downturn.

Most analyses project the future in a linear continuation of the present and recent past. Too little attention is given to the macro picture.

• Do the reports you read contain information on future earnings or a consensus forecast for future earnings? How important is this information in your analysis?
  • Most important, but only in connection with an overview of the past performance of analysts.
• Would it be helpful to see the analysts rankings of companies to buy, sell and hold on Wikinvest?
  • Yes, with the past performance as said above.
• Would you find a side-by-side comparison of historical consensus analyst earnings estimates and actual earnings estimates useful?"""
  • I concur with Tom who said "Again, this information is available via Yahoo! and a number of other sources. It may be useful to integrate this within the WikiCharts so that divergence from estimates and earnings and price movement can better be understood."
• What about projected 1-yr consensus price target (high, low, median) from a year ago vs. actual stock price?
  • Who wants to be reminded of last year's estimates in the current climate? But it would be worth it as a counter-indicator. Other than that I may suggest RSS feed buttons for all new items and the possibility to subscribe to the share information pages.

• Other:

Having noticed some input about the brevity (or not) of items I vote for shorter articles focusing on most relevant information on a topic. Wikipedia actually deters me as entries are rather encyclopedic. Relevance is the priority for me.

In general I prefer a lighter style of writing as 99.9% of the global population are NOT financial experts.

I see myself mainly as a contributor but would look up relevant wikinvest pages before an investment as I do a very wide research.

The automatic incorporation of wikinvest tags/links on blogs is fantastic and should grow wikinvest's reach.

I saw a guideline not to post on micro caps with less than $100 million market cap. Focusing on resource stocks that are at the lowest in a decade I think this guideline excludes the most interesting plays in the future. You don't catch 100-baggers on the big boards.

As wikinvest could become a very global affair I wonder if you could break down contributors by region.

Concerning posting on wikinvest I am still a little deterred by complicated edit commands. Blogger's easy editing is certainly a good example for a system that allows effortless and spontaneous entries.