Eddy Elfenbein lectures Felix Salmon:
July 15th, 2009
4:52 am GMT
Felix,
I hate to deluge you with comments today but I really have to take exception to this post.
One of the big problems with the financial blogosphere is that a huge part of the conversation takes place at 40,000 feet. Have you ever talked with an investor as a client?? Trust me, no one cares about inner details of financial regulations. No one! Mention M3 or whatever and you’ll put people to sleep. I care and you care, but please bear in mind how inside the bubble we are. This is heads on a needle stuff.
Investors care if stock XYZ in their portfolio is going to go up or down. That’s it. You rarely hear that sort of commentary in the financial blogoshere except with a few high profile names. I, heroically, try to be one source—and I’m the only blogger I of who posts his recommendations to be seen 24 hours a day. That’s far more important to individual investors.
Just take one example. Anyone who’s read my blog knows I’ve been pounding the tables for Nicholas Financial. It’s not a secret at all. I’ve been totally open about it and I own it. The stock is up 120% this year. Yay, I got one right. But here’s the deal: People who have experienced that gain don’t care at all about the Dow 30. They don’t care about Bernanke’s beard. It means nothing to them. When it comes to the concerns of real investors, the most you get out of most mainstream financial bloggers is some tired discussion of EMT. No real person investor cares. I can’t tell you how often I’m asked about basic stuff like how often are dividends paid or does a stock split mean I lose money.
You said that bloggers tend to offer value to the extent they’re influential. No! Dear Lord No! They’re valuable to the extent that they’re good. Period. There’s way too much information and way too little news. The people who get that will thrive. Outside of some short-term bumps, influence has nothing to do with it. Personally, I’d prefer not to be influential. Broader society is heavily biased against stock advisors, so I don’t want to deal with it. Hey, I hope bloggers and Wall Street continue to ignore Nicholas Financial.
The difference is that actionable-type blogs can be held accountable in a way others can’t. Your former boss, Dr Roubini, has said lots of things that didn’t pan out (among many more that did), but he won’t be criticized for his mistakes because he’s a big picture guy. Me? I gotta be right all the time because it’s about the little stuff with hard time deadlines.
You wanna test this? Ask smart well-informed finance people who were some Fed chairs before Volcker, then ask them about the worst stock they ever bought. QED. If anything, the market for actionable advice will grow as more investors abandon full-service firms and head to discounters. This is where bloggers should be.
- Posted by Eddy Elfenbein
Eddy Elfenbein blogs at Crossing Wall Street.
I am publishing this because you can replace “stocks” in the text above by “event derivatives”, and get a good inkling pertaining to our prediction markets.
