So, you've heard about the Big Dogs, right? The Goldmans, Merills, and UBSs of the world sometimes seem like they have the investing game all locked up. How can you, the average investor, compete with legions of analysts, hordes of quants, and armies of rabid traders?
Well, let's get this out of the way; we don't think you can. The good news is that they are playing a different kind of game, a game dominated by big money, big investments, and widely diversified portfolios. They are not playing the game that you are playing, which is picking a limited number of stocks in which to invest, stocks that you feel will give you the best return with the least risk.
Currently, you probably make your investment decisions by doing the most in-depth market research for which you can afford the time. If you are really into the small-investor game, you probably read balance sheets and try to pore through other publicly available company financial documents. If you are moderately involved, you are at least going to be following the ticker and the news stories associated with stocks in your portfolio.
If you are doing any of the above, then our website can make your life easier.
So...what is this website for?
Our website is a tool for exploration and for making decisions about where to focus your energy.
What does it do?
It takes the work out of finding news stories and price quotes for your company, providing a service just like the one provided by Google and Yahoo. Then it adds a special sauce. That special sauce is a 'rating' of news stories about a company, that 'walks' along the same timeline as the price quotes. Ratings of news stories are automatically generated and updated in near-real time.
How does this help me?
Well, you want to know if something really good or really bad happens in the news about your company, don't you? And you don't want to have to read every newswire to know, right? Our tool reads the newswires so you don't have to. That's what we mean when we say it is a tool that tells you where to focus your energies. See one of the stocks in your portfolio take a dive in terms of its 'buzz?' That's something to look into. And it's easy enough, because the stories that generated the buzz are presented right alongside the graph.
Are the ratings generated by your tool always 'right?'
No, they are not. But they are right about 85% of the time. That level is accuracy is good enough that when we average the ratings for a given company for a given day--which is how we build data points for the graph--that bad data points drop out. It is very unlikely that you will find a rating that is completely wrong, though you might find a story with a rating magnitude that is different from what you expect.
Ok, the concept intrigues me. How do I sign up to use this service??
Glad you asked. We have a beginning user guide right here.