March Call

TOP CONTRIBUTORS

Pcushing

Hermann S

Date / Time

March 19th at 8pm EST / 5 PST

RSVP

Able to Attend: Patrick, Brian, J.B. Schag

Unable to Attend: Hermann-Isabelle Ayel, George Michaelides

Please be advised the call is scheduled for PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) and or EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Agenda Ideas

• Wikinvest's New Data Product

- Metric I would love: Free Cash Flow / Share (crossing my fingers)

Slides & Call Notes

There were no slides for this call. Consiglieres were distributed links to demo pages via email.

George

First impressions: I am really amazed of the new product’s progress - to be honest I do not remember using anything similar, neither with yahoo finance or Google finance. First, comments about the data pages:

• As regards interactivity and other stock sites: gathering so much info in one place for sure enhances interactivity and well-rounded knowledge for certain stocks or metrics; but what about the info that a visitor to the site would like to find. I mean for someone who is more interested in a company’s stock analysis the first version (without other stock sites inclusive) would be more appropriate - and it is really very efficient, as it combines simplicity with a vast quantity of info! I therefore wonder whether something more “unobtrusive” version of putting other websites in. Or maybe something like news wire; i.e, i would prefer a website with the analytical tool as on the first version and something like a “news ticker” to show interesting articles and news about the stock…
• In addition, how about using audiovisual combined with the ticker…?

Next, comments about the tearsheet page:

• The second version is comprehensive but I believe it is too much info in one place…maybe it would be better as it is in the first version where info are displayed as requested by the visitor-user…and if he requests some more info, like the wikinvest community analysis, Bulls or Bears part, and news about the stock to be able to find everything by a simple click…
• I do not know the target group of Wikinvest or the actual visitors types now, but I guess, it is more focused in investors – Am I right? Therefore being able to make their analysis easier in order to form wiser decisions would be of great usefulness for the investors, and therefore the data demo would be more appropriate…though I do not know exactly how the revenue generation works and therefore my assumptions may be irrelevant to your expectations from this attempt.

Some more thoughts(22/3/09):

• Instead of graphs appearing when mousing-over the metrics, I would prefer to see a small icon on the left or right of the metric, indicating that I have the option to see such a graph. The reason for that is i.e. when i scroll down the page to see the information displayed, several graphs start to appear without my consent and more important covering other metrics.

• I would like to see enhanced interactivity with the stock graphs, i.e. being able to choose periods of time to be illustrated and making comparisons with indices and other stocks in same or similar industries.

JB Schag

Comments about the data demo:

• Bid / Ask price is missing -- something even Yahoo Finance has
• Simple layout, well organized -- he's used to having too much information so this is a pleasant change
• Would like to see definitions upon hover
• For analyst ratings, who are the analysts? when did they make the rating?
  • Also, what about analyst rating trends over time
• Would like to be able to compare bar graphs side-by-side with another company or overlay with another company
• Charts should display 3 years by default but should definitely include quarter data
• It'd be great to see the graphs and data connected somehow -- maybe via a hover or highlighting
• Does a lot of excel work, especially analyzing Tangible Common Equity (TCE) for banks recently
  • Would like to see more of these ratios included in cash statements -- see Yahoo Finance for a list of key statistics
  • Has proprietary spreadsheets where he analyzes his companies with custom metrics
  • Always suspicious of data. Wants to know what doesn't make sense and would love to see metric annotations so he can see what other people think is important
  • Would certainly contribute annotations so he could see what other people had to say
• In general, he'd love to know what other people are looking at, see how they've explored the data with a trail
  • Similar to following someone else as they analyze spreadsheet data. You see what other people are looking at and learn new things
• Emphasis on hovering ability. Always appreciates the ability to "drill down" further into information; adds richness to information

Comments about the contributor report and bulls / bears:

• Would like to see how his contributions are doing. Compares this to having a bunch of information in an instrument panel
• Regarding bulls / bears, many don't have references. Would be great to remind people to include a reference.
• Would like to see a timestamp or color coding on the bulls / bears reasons
• Would like the ability to comment on bulls / bears

Tom

Comments about the data demo:

• Loves information that you can see upon hover -- especially for media on his blog.
• Would like to see both a definition for a term and a chart
• In particular, finviz stands out in their ability to do this
  • Easy to navigate for finding data
  • Charts appear on hover
  • Would love a blogger tool offered something similar where a hyperlink would produce a chart upon hover
• Wants to set up his own chart for Microsoft (MSFT) revenue growth for a specific time period for his blog
• Hovering sometimes gives percentages but absolute data is useful too; similarly, where there's absolute data, percentages are helpful
• Would love to see comments from other investors on the data they're seeing
  • Data differs by industry
  • Bring in experts and see what they're saying about metrics
• Would love to see better associations betwen graphs and the data tables
• Would love to see tables in a color other than gray
• What does TTM stand for? (It stands for trailing twelve months)

Comments about the tearsheet:

• Would love the ability to organize these modules as a self-controlled dashboard
• Finviz does a great job segmenting news and blogs
  • Would like to see news and blogs split out
  • How about a favicon for the content providers? Or a timestamp rather than just relative "7 hours ago" lables
  • Provider and time passed taking up too much real estate in news view
• Doesn't like having to go to Wikinvest to see annotations. Would prefer to see annotations in a "bubble view" on the chart, rather than sending users elsewhere
• Didn't understand that "close" meant to close the annotation. Hit browser's back button first time he saw this.

Comments about bulls / bears:

• Likes the thumbs up / thumbs down idea for bulls / bears rather than commenting because comments can get ugly fast
• Would like to be able to sort bulls / bears by date, most votes, etc.

Isabelle

Impressive! What a great work!

I like this really because I always think that we do not capitalize enough the true resources of computer and digital data (see http://www.gapminder.org/).

You are making a huge work with wikidata. I must confess that I felt a bit lost with so many data and interesting things to watch and analyze (you can imagine that data about Microsoft compared to Google and Yahoo, I was in my "garden").

Only one "data visualizer" give me an error message (my browser is firefox 3.0, working on Linux Ubuntu computer, this is not the average config of your "customers"): the first upper one on the first page (look like chart).

The Advert revenue data was not very clear to me: 2 lines were contradictory ...to me (maybe I misunderstood what it was about or it was in construction...).

In my opinion: less data with a few lines of explanation and more graphics (histogramme, circle...) could be as valuable.

Hermann

Comments about the data demo: Excellent progress and great work - this is going to help us gaining better understanding of a bigger set of companies.

Here are some suggestions:

• Indication of reporting currency and market place (exchange) may be required for non US companies

• Industry Metrics - ability to switch to competitors by mouse klick would be fine

• Balance Sheet, Cash Flow and Income Statement - a direct link to the source reports would be great (I remember the hint in the reports that the data should always be considered together with the extensive notes section)

• Balance Sheet - I would appreciate a type of graph as I added to e.g. Oracle visualizing growth, bookvalue, cash and liquidity (ref attached file). Details to be adjusted to the capability of the software.

• Key Data / Balance Sheet Section - Non current assets include intangible assets and goodwill as well. It may be better to keep any detail split on the Balance Sheet page and display here the ratios with a chart of the data, only.

• A process should be established how to manage occurrence of suspect data.

• Details for the analysts ratings are missing (ref. JB's comments).

• 5 years charts and annual data are appreciated - may be a switch of JB's 3 years quarterly and a long term view is possible. A lot of Australian companies are doing their financial reporting half yearly, only.

Comments about the tearsheet:

• The Analysis should not be open for editing from other sites.

• The tearsheet provides good summary information of the company and has the potential to attract much more interest to Wikinvest.