October 2009 Call

TOP CONTRIBUTORS

Pcushing

Date / Time

Morning Call

• Thursday, October 8th at 8pm EST / 5 PST

RSVP

• Able to Attend: Patrick, Jb, Jack
• Unable to Attend:

Evening Call

• Thursday, October 8th at 10am PST (Pacific Standard Time US) or, in other timezones:
  • 7pm MET (Middle Europen Time, i.e., UTC+1)
  • 1pm EST (Eastern Standard Time US)
  • 10:30pm IST (Indian Standard Time)
  • If you're looking to convert, please use World Clock or message me

RSVP

• Able to Attend: Patrick, Tom Shohfi, The Dean , Isabelle Ayel , Dorothy Hill
• Unable to Attend: Hermann, David Turetsky

Agenda

Our agenda will be centered around Wikinvest's new portfolio product and discussions about where we should expand our content focus next.

Call Notes

• Tom Shohfi
  • likes the new Data pages for the potential to include them in research, presentations to his students
  • for investing, isolated metrics aren't quite as important to him; he wants to be able to mix and match them, see revenue and margins, etc.
  • uses RSS feeds exclusively so any news / alerts have to reach him that way; feels so-so about alerts in general as they're not smart. For example, if you have a filter for extraordinary volume, you get the alert on day one, but if that volume continues for 5 days, you get that same alert day after day
  • Uses a dedicated large monitor to follow a list of 100+ stocks 7 times a day looking for major price changes
  • uses news, etc. to determine why changes occurred after finding those securities with the greatest changes
  • any portfolio needs to feature short positions for him to join in; it also needs to allow him to make multiple portfolios (watchlist, portfolio, etc.)
  • he needs real-time data for this type of usage, uses CAPS for relative returns compared to the markets
  • doesn't like the way CAPS benchmarks everything to the S&P, each company has a different benchmark that makes sense
  • he's technically saavy and would be extremely hesitant to integrate with his brokerage because of security issues (SSL, clear-text passwords, etc.); instead, though, he'd love if he could manually import each time by logging in directly to brokerage (and knowing passwords, data are not saved on a Wikinvest server) or upload a CSV file. He only trades (on a busy week) 1-2 times and doesn't need the constant synch to his brokerage given the security issues.
  • Getting him to switch is all about integrating Data Central-type features into portfolio; he can do his fundamental research and follow companies whereas his brokerage is useless for research
  • Over the long-term, he'd love to see options in the portfolio, be able to create both fixed and flexible portfolios (i.e., one that he can create an leave to demonstrate an idea, and one that's flexible)
  • Other ideas -- a lot of novice investors don't know the concept of portfolio optimization; Wikinvest could potentially suggest stocks/ETFs/etc. to lower risk without lowering return using a combination of Markowitz construction, CAPM, etc. to lower volatility
• Isabelle Ayel
  • likes the comparisons to competitors on data search, loves the idea of the financial search engine in Bling
  • checks her portfolio every month and looks at the price of her holdings and total value, then records everything on a personal wiki
  • Uses Google to track portfolio online and would love a way to embed it in her wiki; also uses Google Alerts for weekly news about her portfolio companies. Again, everything must be delivered to her via RSS, not email.
  • Would love to be able to embed a Wikinvest portfolio on her site, would love a daily summary of holdings, etc. via RSS
  • she thinks people are most likely to switch based on Wikinvest "Insights into portfolio", for example, the anti-portfolio is very interesting to her
  • security doesn't bother her as much; in the days of paper there was no security so she thinks this is a bit overhyped, security is better now than ever
  • really would love to see an iPhone app, especially as Europeans are really mobile-focused; start with iPhone app before mobile-accessible version of the site. People who choose the iPhone app are going to be much more focused, have it on their desktop, rather than navigating from a browser
  • Wikinvest has a ton of content, but it's not making enough noise out there. Make more noise!
• J.B. Schag
  • would use the data pages as part of a presentation to prove a point to a client
  • checks his portfolio multiple times a week, but not daily, for both personal uses, clients' portfolios, etc.
  • tries not to do the same thing each day so he doesn't become blind to other trends out there; will scan random internet newsletters for new ideas; however, news is always late
  • likes to imagine what will happen with investments and take notes to that effect to protect himself from fiduciary responsibilities to clients
  • would really like to see an iphone integration as he's constantly on-the-go
  • absolutely needs to have multiple portfolios, one for himself, one for an industry he's following, one for family, clients, etc.
  • For him, flexibility is the key to getting him to switch so he likes the customizable portions of the portfolio; Trust and improved functionality are also extremely important
  • Other ideas -- most people are very private with concerns to their money; there are all kinds of barriers to investing. He'd love to be able to set up portfolios as gifts to younger generation, potentially give stocks as gifts
• Brad Monterio
  • Finance sites can often be overwhelming; stick with the simple "Bling" homepage (simpler is better)
  • Data search led to discussion of XBRL, apparently China mandated all public companies to file in XBRL 5 years ago so Shanghai and Shenzen company financials are already using this, Japan, Australia, UK, and Netherlands also making progress
  • More of a buy and hold investor and uses a strategy similar to what he hears from CPA / wealth managers; he checks his portfolio more than once a month but certainly not daily; uses Fidelity ActiveTrader Pro
  • he looks first at performance of his holdings, especially over the past 3 days, looks at recent dividends, real-time data's important
  • likes the ability to isolate the day's change in our mocks; currently this takes him a couple of clicks
  • would love to be able to take notes on holdings, save a news item with notes associated with a stock; he might not invest in it now, but he can come back to that information later, you can monitor these notes for later
  • if he was using this platform as a daily, almost trading platform, he'd want to feel like this was most up-to-date data
  • would love some sort of indication on-site that something extraordinary's happening, for example, if a price is moving outside normal ranges maybe make the row flash red on that holding; similarly, notable volume, excessive news, etc. to capture that something's going on
  • serious alerts that effect price movements he'd want email / SMS
  • right now he gets a standard, daily digest at both the open and close of the markets with updates on his holdings
  • In terms of what he thinks would get people to switch, he thinks synching with the brokerage should be a given in this day; re-keying your portfolio is such an inconvenience so you almost have to have this feature; he thinks novice / non-accredited investors will be more interested in insights about your portfolio while real-time is required if you expect to get the trader / everyday user
  • The only other thing he'd want would be actual trading capabilities to go with the rest of the platform
  • Other than that, further underscored building infrastructure so we're ready for XBRL, by early 2011 all U.S.-listed companies should be filing this way and EDGAR Online has already manually tagged 10 years worth of historical data for U.S. companies

More feedback via email

• JB Lo

I actually don't have a real-life portfolio since I'm just a student and my savings are not big enough to be worth investing on the markets. But I use the KaChing Application on Facebook and it's been the most satisfying thing I found out there. So synching with the brokerage is not really a concern for me.

I really like the design of the webpage you sent us. I'm kind of a data geek so I really like being able to display different elements (P/E, ROE...) on the portfolio page.

I also like having the news displayed on the right panel and I'd like the idea of having a RSS feed on my portfolio, maybe a daily or weekly briefing on what happened on the portfolio (major changes in prices, volumes, earnings conference...). I get all this from yahoo! and google finance but I think it'd be a great plus to wikinvest portfolio.

Tom's idea of tools to lower risk using CAPM, Markowitz... is very appealing to me since I'm not (yet?) a professional investor and thus don't have time or tools to optimize my portfolio using those concepts. And it can have a great educational purpose, to help investors understand better how those theories work and put them into pratice.

What I'd like the best is the possibility to customize the info and data you get on your portfolio. Since I'm a novice investor, I feel like i need to experiment the data and ratio I'm most comfortable with and customization is the best way to do it to avoid being overwhelmed by data or inversely to be limited with few indicators.