Stock Discussions

March 12, 2008 9:37 PM

Looking for some well argued stock/financial discussion sites.

I've started to invest a bit of my own money now and I'm looking for an site that enables you to kind of throw ideas out there and get some intelligent feedback on them. Kind of like an ask metafilter type place, but for stocks, mutual funds, etc... I've checked out some of the discussion forums associated with Google Finance but most of those discussions seem to be something like "OMG, this stock is tanking, buy it in 2 weeks after its lost 75% of its value, I totally know what I'm talking about!!"

For example, what set this off is a conversation I had with a friend of mine in which we discussed if Countrywide will actually be bought by Bank of America, and if it will be does that mean its a good idea to buy Countrywide now as it is trading at far less then what Bank of America agreed to buy it for?

Where do sites like this exist? Or is it possible they do not and its why people go to professional money managers?

In the alternative, can we start the financial part of mefi? FiFi anyone?

posted by jourman2 to work & money (12 comments total)

Check out the Diehards forum.
posted by jdroth at 10:40 PM on March 12

MorningStar is and independent investment research firm. Their website has a discussion forum that focuses on the topics you seem to want.

The Vanguard Group is an investment management company. From Wikipedia: "Vanguard is unusual among mutual-fund companies since it is owned by the funds themselves. In this structure, each fund contributes a set amount of capital towards shared management, marketing, and distribution services. The company claims that this structure better orients management towards shareholder interests. Other mutual-fund sponsors are expected simultaneously to make a profit for their outside owners and provide the most cost-effective service to funds for their shareholders."

So while MorningStar is what you're after, don't be afraid to look at Vanguard for advice as well. I use both websites regularly.
posted by carabiner at 10:46 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

InvestorVillage.com has really good forums for some stocks. Very few are actually active and not all that are active are useful, but there are some very high traffic and quality discussions that go on. The site management is proactive about getting rid of spam, taking care of the users, etc.

That said, if I ever found a financial forum that is somehow completely free of the "OMG it tanked!!!! LOOLLZ, sell, sell, sell!!!!" drivel and has good content, I would suspect that I am hallucinating. What seems to differentiate different boards is whether any signal is present, or whether it's all just noise.
posted by bsdfish at 2:19 AM on March 13

The Ticker Forum is very lo-fi, several members are outright racists or worse stereotypes. However, it's far from the disaster that is the Yahoo boards, and they have had the correct market thesis totally nailed for half a year now. Based on ideas generated from reading the board I'm up 80% since August, and I am very grateful for the discussion despite the conservative talk radio atmosphere.
posted by fatllama at 2:47 AM on March 13

Oh, and re: the Countrywide deal. B of A can bail by October ("end Q3") given the terms that have been specified in press releases. At the time, their deal was a nice option on Countrywide: obtain the company at far below market value if the MBS market lockup proved to be only temporary, yet they aren't obligated to take on Countrywide's staggering liabilities if the market is still screwed in Q3 '08. If they have to write-off their investment (something totaling $4B right now, I believe), it'll be the least of their problems.
posted by fatllama at 2:55 AM on March 13

The Motley Fool and Interactive Investor both fulfill your criteria. As you note, be alive to ramping.
posted by dmt at 4:04 AM on March 13

How about the CAPS crowd at Motely Fool?

/Yahoo just puzzled the heck outta me. Every other message is spam from THE SAME DOMAIN. How tough is it to write a perl script to auto zap any message with that URL? They gotta know they're driving people away. Other than their discussion forum, Yahoo has some pretty nice stats, graphs, and gizmos (eg: portfolio trackers & stock screens).
posted by RavinDave at 4:07 AM on March 13

btw: jourman2 ... The portfolio manager at Yahoo is a WONDERFUL gizmo. It lets you create multiple portfolios and updates them in real time (well, 20 min. delay). You can create a bunch of "fantasy portfolios" and see how you would have done. I currently track Favorite Stocks, SinoStocks, Buffet Top 10, Buffet Bottom 10, Soros Bottom 15, Dogs of Dow, Selected Penny Stocks, Bargain Growth (from their excellent stock screen), Industrial, Parma and (of course) my actual personal portfolio.
posted by RavinDave at 4:19 AM on March 13

globaledgeinvestors.com
posted by Dan Brilliant at 6:15 AM on March 13

This is incredibly specific to just AAPL, but this is by far the best forum that talks about stocks and options. The people there are great, and very knowledgeable. There is some general talk, but it is very focused on AAPL.
posted by cschneid at 11:15 AM on March 13

csneid kind of nails it. If you are investing in specific companies, you need to find the knowledge about each, not some general chat.
posted by bystander at 4:22 AM on March 14

I like Value Investing Club - set up by Joel Greeblatt. You have to be a member to see real time posting but easy to get a delayed account. I find the write ups pretty interesting.
posted by laukf at 3:17 PM on March 14