

New Finance Website based on Arc / HN - siruva07
http://www.wallstbeat.com

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jacquesm
<http://moniedinterests.com/>

<http://www.markenomics.com/>

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siruva07
both of those are dead-pooled. looks like they couldn't get anyone using it.

and add a way to search industry/geography.

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jacquesm
Yes, that's the point, sort of. For one this has been done before, several
times. Only newmogul.com managed to make a go of it and I think that was in
large part because of the fact that the people that started it continued to
use it every day.

You really need some 'life' if you expect to keep this going, just launching
something is not enough.

You could probably write whole books about how to bootstrap a community. It's
a pity nickb could not be bothered to pass newmogul.com off to others to keep
it alive, it already had the hardest problem (initial audience) solved.

And any new launch of something like that will make it harder for the next to
be taken seriously.

Maybe all you guys should pool or something instead of everybody running their
own 1 user domain?

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mixmax
Not entirely related, but did anyone ever find out what happened to nickb? All
of a sudden he seemingly just dropped off the earth.

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jacquesm
No, but not for lack of trying. Never got a response, but I believe someone
else mentioned that they confirmed that he was ok, I just can't find the
reference.

The phone number in the newmogul.com registration is answered by someone that
says there is no 'nick' there.

What's the proper etiquette for signing off from a website anyway? Is there
some kind of moral obligation to announce your departure? I'm sure plenty of
people leave HN daily (and plenty arrive), surely if everybody would say 'bye'
every time they leave it would get pretty messy.

But for long time contributors it might make sense, or at least an update in
your profile or so...

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jakarta
Make this but target it towards value investors (because they read a
tremendous amount-- multidisciplinary stuff, newspapers, SEC filings, etc) and
you will probably be able to attract a pretty good core following. Then you
can gradually expand and widen the audience.

Feel free to contact me (see my profile) if you'd like some more input if you
decide to move in that direction.

~~~
gxs
Do you know of any resources that differentiate the different type of
investment styles? I see you mentioned value investors and know there are
other types.

Finance is one of those worlds that's so big, it's kind of hard to find a
place to start digging in.

~~~
jakarta
Investors usually use technical or fundamental analysis. Some use both, but I
would say it is not very common.

Technical guys are usually trading, they are looking at price charts and
trying to gauge supply/demand and figure out how prices will change.

Fundamental investors take longer term perspectives, they analyze reported
financials and qualitative factors, model earnings, etc, to determine where
they think the company's performance will go and how that ultimately drives
the stock price.

From there, you have some other possible divisions. There are traders for
every asset class (fixed income, currencies, commodities, derivatives). Then,
some investors differ by strategy (value, growth, global macro, event driven,
long, short, long/short, market neutral, distressed debt). Some might use a
combination of both.

E.g.: a macro trader might use technical analysis in the day to day while
analyzing data releases from foreign countries to determine how their bonds
will perform. So a combo of both fundamental and technical analysis.

Hope that helps.

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j2d2
New Mogul was the first I've seen of this and was the best. I think New
Mogul's success was also partly due to the intensity of the financial crisis
and people's interest in understanding how it all works. Nickb vanished,
unfortunately, and New Mogul eventually fell.

No site has been able to replicate the New Mogul community and I don't believe
it's the UI's fault entirely, though New Mogul actually did a good job
sprucing up the default look. I believe the intense interest along with
communal enthusiasm just doesn't exist in that industry under normal
circumstances. And certainly not enough for a shared information / aggregation
system to prosper.

Consider the nature of the industry. Knowledge is power. If you're not all in
a sinking ship together, why would you give up your competitive edge?

~~~
newgarth
Re: nature of the industry -- i think there is more sharing that goes on.
People send each other emails all the time. On a macro level, this stuff is
already out there and so you expect the FIRM to be executing on it. The bigger
question is for an individual trader or analyst (or associate) are _you_ up-
to-date. So b-school classmates and friends from college help each other stay
abreast of things, if nothing else as a safety net since it's always good to
have friends at another building on the street.

~~~
hereandthere
well said. and i think that's the point. a centralized forum of like-minded
people would be an invaluable asset. just remains to be seen whether the
average finance person is too short-sighted / in need of immediate
gratification to contribute and make it what it should be.

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bdickason
I chuckled at this because of the recent "Wall St Traders = Hackers" post by
Mark Cuban. Will be fun to watch how the format caters to the two if they
really are so similar!

"The best analogy for traders ? They are hackers. Just as hackers search for
and exploit operating system and application shortcomings, traders do the same
thing. A hacker wants to jump in front of your shopping cart and grab your
credit card and then sell it. A high frequency trader wants to jump in front
of your trade and then sell that stock to you."

[http://blogmaverick.com/2010/05/09/what-business-is-wall-
str...](http://blogmaverick.com/2010/05/09/what-business-is-wall-street-in/)

~~~
siruva07
Hackers care about reputation where Traders care about anonymity. The
algorithms behind digg/reddit/HN is what makes them the best for finding good
stuff. But maybe Traders are more like the douches that read TFLN and why
anonymous voting might be a better idea than requiring log in

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sireat
I liked newmogul, submissions were of good quality. Comments were of quality
too, but had not yet reached the critical mass where a longer discussion can
develop.

Problem with finance aggregrators is filtering the high quality articles, so
much of finance writing is subpar.

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secret
Something that could get me to participate is if I saw more technical articles
and resources, rather than the same financial news I can find anywhere. That
will limit your audience, but could help develop a community.

~~~
hereandthere
what exactly do you mean by more technical? technical as in finance-technical
(mathematic, algorithmic trading, etc.)? or technical as in more related to
the breed of content on YC?

~~~
secret
I guess I meant the former, but both work. I've been building up a large
collection of blogs with this sort of info for my own reading. (I've put some
up on <http://quantblog.com/library> , but the whole site is still a work in
progress). I can email you a larger list or post here if anyone is interested.
Again, this caters to my interests, you may have other ideas in mind.

~~~
hereandthere
That would be really interesting -- I'd love your list, as I'm interested in
many of the same areas. Much appreciated. I'm @ aiwnycapts@gmail.com

~~~
secret
sent :)

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nroach
imho, The value of a community is in its members, not in the software. Sure,
UI can have an effect on the ability to build a community, but only upon the
edge cases.

What made HN successful isn't the presentation, but the character of its
members and its association with Ycombinator.

Whether wallstbeat succeeds is more a function of its ability to attract
valuable commentary and users willing to share analysis in a public forum.
Failing this, it's vulnerable to the same pump-n-dump trash you see on Yahoo!
finance and other sites.

~~~
seanl
I think you're right that the members of a community give it its value, but I
think you underestimate the influence of the software. Consider it like the
decor of a bar - once the regular clientele are established it becomes less
important, but initially people are drawn there because they feel an affinity
with the look and feel. IMHO of course.

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rianjs
There's no RSS feed.

~~~
newgarth
<http://wallstbeat.com/rss>

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Kilimanjaro
UI sucks. Let me explain:

Hackers like plain boring lists (like HN and reddit) We do a quick scan and
determine what is interesting or not in a second.

Non-hackers don't like plain boring lists, they like visuals, pics of the day,
planes crashing, latest hairdos, etc.

So unless you put a couple of graphs and stats about the dow plunging, S&P in
blood red, etc that site is just, booooring.

~~~
marilyn
This site is for a crowd that spends a good amount of time watching stock
tickers. If anyone other than hackers would appreciate a no nonsense
interface, it would be the finance crowd.

~~~
siruva07
agreed. look at the bloomberg.com homepage. (hell, look at bloomberg terminal
20 years ago!)

banking analysts sit around all day and wait for their Directors/MDs to turn
them work at 5pm. drawing attention away from "work" cuts into facetime. so
something non-flashy might actually work.

~~~
swernli
Sorry for the accidental downvote. I was trying to upvote and missed!

