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TMFSarahGen (99.79)

MSFT AAPL brains create new CAPS (did they not know there was one already?)

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November 24, 2008 – Comments (8)

Seriously?  They couldn't Google this and figure it out for themselves?  And they put money behind it?  And what kind of name did they pick anyway?  Geez. 

So, some well known brains from MSFT and AAPL ( a co-founder of AAPL and a Microsoft exec) have come up with a site that uses collective knowledge to rank stocks - the wisdom of crowds.  Hmm, why does that sound familiar?  

So the site looks ok, but I was turned off already.  Why was I turned off you might ask?  Because I can't find out the rating for a stock, unless I rate it myself!  Hmmm, imagine that I am a biotech investing neophyte or idiot (either word would possibly describe my ability to pick biotechs), and then imagine that if I want to see what the crowd has determined - that I must vote first!  You don't want my vote on a biotech, believe me you don't!  But I'd like to know what you think! That's why I have so many biotech experts marked as favorites - I want to know what *they* think.

Also unknown, is whether they gradually rank people and then value the higher ranked votes more.  I've seen lots of debates about CAPS and the rankings, but I think we can all agree that someone in the top couple thousand with a lot of picks rated and high accuracy should have more influence than some pumper who comes in and picks only one stock and has no track record.

Here's the Marketwatch story that told me about this silly site:

Big Apple, Microsoft names back stock-picking site By John Letzing, MarketWatch SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Apple Inc. co-founder Mike Markkula and Microsoft Corp. executive Mike McCue are backing an Internet start-up designed to let stock-market investors trade on the collective wisdom of its users.

And here's the site that it references: www.piqqem.com

Just seems weird to me.

8 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On November 24, 2008 at 7:35 PM, kdakota630 (31.77) wrote:

I had a very quick look.  Frankly, I'd rather stay here.  I'm happy here, and I don't adapt easily to change.

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#2) On November 24, 2008 at 8:10 PM, stequoianie (< 20) wrote:

"So the site looks ok, but I was turned off already.  Why was I turned off you might ask?  Because I can't find out the rating for a stock, unless I rate it myself!"

 

ironic that this is what turned you off, because this is precisely what sets Piqqem apart from CAPS and every other social investing site I've seen.  Piqqem is a true wisdom of crowds app, which means it gives an equal vote to everyone (yes, everyone - including the neophyte/idiot) because the outliers are just as important as the experts in enabling crowd wisdom to emerge.  and if this doesn't make sense, I recommend reading about the wisdom of crowds phenomenon as James Surowiecki describes it.  

 

exper analysts have their own opinions, the market skews towards big buyers, social investing sites like CAPS try to find the best pickers, but Piqqem is an entirely different organism - which is what makes it valuable, IMHO.  that said, note that Piqqem is not advertising itself as a silver bullet, but as one in a portfolio of sources of financial info, complementary with other sources (like CAPS).

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#3) On November 24, 2008 at 8:18 PM, lquadland10 (< 20) wrote:

When you have created the best others always want to copy you. I love caps. Great advice and smart players who put up with me. When you find a home who walks you through these trying times and makes you safe with wise advice and laugh a time or two. Then no one can compete.

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#4) On November 24, 2008 at 8:20 PM, kdakota630 (31.77) wrote:

Stequoianie - you make some good points.  My decisions here are often swayed by the rating of a stock.  When I first started, I was green-thumbing stocks left and right simply because they were 4 or 5-star rated.

Personally, I don't think either idea is necessarily better, just different.

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#5) On November 24, 2008 at 9:00 PM, Ph1sh55 (28.79) wrote:

I like that you would not see the rating unless rating yourself- it goes a small ways towards reducing blanket mob mentality if trying to guage the public opinion.  Here when an all star suddenly greenthumbs a stock you'll get a whole bunch of people following suit simply based on reputation.

 

 

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#6) On November 29, 2008 at 12:34 AM, FleaBagger (34.49) wrote:

It does have a "neutral outlook" choice, limiting the damage you do with your ignorance.

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#7) On December 02, 2008 at 6:34 AM, TMFCop (83.53) wrote:

Obviously I'm biased towards CAPS, but I gave Piqqem a trial run to see what the competition was like. I found there was a lot to recommend it. I like the stock Wiki, for example (it was something I suggested be incorporated into CAPS awhile ago)  as well as the ability to pick a price target. But I found this quote by CEO Jeff Winter to be funny:

"In general, we differ from the other sites in that we are a true wisdom of crowds sourcing application. That is, everyone gets one vote and they can vote as much as they want. We then aggregate and report the results." (emphasis added)

Reminds me of the old voter fraud exhortations: Vote early, vote often. I guess that's similar to being able to close out a pick in CAPS and reopen it, and admittedly you can't just keep hitting the vote button to boost the score.  Otherwise I found the site a bit clunky and slow, but perhaps they still have to work some bugs out.

I like a lot of the features that CAPS offers that aren't available on Piqqem, but again, that could be because it is still new and CAPS itself continues to add new features. However, unless the speed of the site picks up (it takes forever for my lone Piqq to load that my flea-like attention span was quickly getting ready to go elsewhere) it might not be all that successful.

Like Sarah, though, I found the inability to see what a stock's rating was until I already rated it myself a bit off-putting. While I understand the idea behind stequoianie's idea that it does not let someone else's vote influence your own, sometimes I'm not interested in rating a stock but just want to see what others think of it. Perhaps a highly rated stock would cause me to start my own research on a company. That's not happening.

It's not a bad effort, and I don't think it's better than CAPS (or even equal to it) but it underscores the model CAPS has created.

Rich 

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#8) On December 02, 2008 at 8:35 PM, TMFSarahGen (99.79) wrote:

thanks for thoughts all!  btw, Fleabagger thanks for pointing out the neutral option, I somehow missed that!

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