What Seeking Alpha Is Doing To Prevent Paid Stock Promotion [View article]
Hi Sheldond,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
As you mentioned, we do champion the crowd-sourced nature of our platform. We believe that an open platform which allows for rigorous debate helps investors make better decisions, and the recent Purdue study confirmed the incredible predictive nature of SA's crowd-sourced platform with regards to short- and long-term stock movement. (You can find more details about that study here: http://seekingalpha.co...)
We don't want to create classes of "haves" and "have nots," nor do we believe that we have done so. Most research platforms either keep their research behind a paywall forever, or share only a small fraction of their research publicly. At Seeking Alpha, ~90% of our research is publicly available from the moment of publication. Approximately 10% of SA's research is selected for the PRO subscription service, and each and every PRO article is made available to all of Seeking Alpha's audience after the initial 24 hours. This gives our audience of over 3.1 million registered users and 9 million monthly unique visitors unprecedented access to research targeted at institutional investors.
Our PRO service is primarily geared at buysiders and other market professionals, but we're always looking for ways to provide additional value to the entire SA community. In the past 12 months alone, we've brought on-board 1,680 new contributors (bringing our total to nearly 9,000), launched a new article category spotlighting analysis by industry experts, simplified the site navigation, and rolled out a significant update to our mobile apps. All SA users have free access to over 470,000 articles and over 4,000,000 comments (no, those are not typos).
We will continue to do our best to provide value for the entire SA audience. I'd love to hear any additional suggestions you may have; feel free to contact me via direct message.
Thanks for your comment. I wanted to clarify a key point about SA PRO. We do publish excellent articles as part of our PRO subscription platform, and this platform is indeed geared at market professionals, but ALL site users - whether they're subscribers or not - have a window to read each PRO article.
PRO subscribers get a 24-hour early look at our PRO research. After the initial 24 hours, the articles are made publicly available to the entire Seeking Alpha audience, and you can find them on quote pages, the homepage, in the various SA newsletters, etc. Those articles remain publicly available to SA users for 30 days, and then enter the PRO research library which is available exclusively to subscribers.
We've published over 6,300 PRO articles so far, all of which were available to all SA users for 30 days. Subscribers continue to get access to these articles, providing them with unparalleled coverage of small- and mid-cap stocks.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
For apples to apples, as you say, I also included this in my original comment: "30-day return of all Alpha-Rich ideas: 4.8% (vs. 2.01% SPDR S&P 500 return)"
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
A few readers have asked about the Alpha-Rich calls that we now include in Wall Street Breakfast. In particular, deercreekvols wanted to know if all Alpha-Rich articles are "winners."
The short answer, of course, is that no, not every Alpha-Rich article outperforms, though the aggregate performance is excellent (details below).
SA Pro subscribers get early access to Alpha-Rich articles, which contain high-conviction long or short opportunities. These articles are made publicly available 24 hours later. In each Wall Street Breakfast, we highlight two Alpha-Rich articles that have recently become publicly available (that's the "Alpha-Rich Stocks To Watch" section) and two articles that have performed exceptionally well.
We choose to highlight the exceptional performers because we're proud of how well out contributors have called these opportunities, because Alpha-Rich articles are consistently of a high caliber and because we want to communicate to readers the value inherent in a Pro subscription.
As of the beginning of July, Alpha-Rich articles in aggregate have outperformed the market: 2-day return of all Alpha-Rich ideas: 1.1% (vs. 0.17% SPDR S&P 500 return) 30-day return of all Alpha-Rich ideas: 4.8% (vs. 2.01% SPDR S&P 500 return) 30-day performance of the top 20% of all Alpha-Rich ideas: 29% (vs. 1.65% SPDR S&P 500 return)
You're welcome to check out the full list of Alpha-Rich articles here (http://bit.ly/16DBQvr) or in the Alpha-Rich section of the homepage.
For more information about SA Pro or our Alpha-Rich articles, you can contact me via direct message, or read more here (http://bit.ly/QEO4Ta).
Best, Rachael Director, SA Pro (and proud former author of WSB. Nice to see some familiar faces here, and some new ones.)
Privatized Prisons: Public Relations Nightmare But A Pretty Great Business [View article]
As per Jeffrey Dow Jones' request, a paragraph in the article has been amended to reflect the 'Special Dividend' that rwagner467 pointed out. Thanks everyone.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Hi Shmoo-
We've made a few changes to Wall Street Breakfast recently, as you've noticed. Our goal is to make WSB both incredibly useful and easy to read, whether on a mobile device or on the website. To this end, we're trying out a format where we include only the links that provide the most value for our readers - in this case, deeper opinion and analysis of the topics at hand.
When a story is an exclusive, we of course provide attribution to the original source. As you noted, this is important for preserving the integrity of the site. In the case of the Social Security story you mentioned, though Bloomberg and other sites carried the news, the original source is actually the government report referenced above, which can be found here: http://1.usa.gov/JWiWEU
Your feedback, and the feedback of all our readers, is crucial to making WSB the fantastic product it is, so please keep the comments coming.
Apollo Global Management (APO) is leading a group that is close to buying El Paso's (EP) oil-exploration business for around $7B, sources say, with a deal announcement possible as soon as today. [View news story]
Kinder Morgan is looking to offload EP's exploration and production business and will use the proceeds of the sale to pay down some of the debt KMI is taking on to fund its El Paso purchase.
MasterCard (MA +1.9%) CEO Ajay Banga tells the Nikkei business daily that the deleveraging cycle in the U.S. is "reaching an end," but warns that until housing and unemployment improve, "you can't say that the consumer is in a better place." (submitted by Holly Thompson) [View news story]
The WSJreports that President Obama plans to nominate Harvard finance professor Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell - a former Bush official and P-E exec - to fill the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board. [View news story]
Hi Frank-
It's a fair criticism. On the one hand, we do try to limit how often we link to articles behind paywalls. On the other hand, we would be doing Market Currents readers a disservice if we skipped salient stories simply because some sources are behind a paywall, especially when we're talking about such a mainstream source as the WSJ. As a middle ground, we provide the in-text link as a courtesy but generally try to encapsulate the crux of the story in the Market Current itself. That way, those who want to click through for additional information can do so and can handle the paywall as they see fit. For those who don't want to click through or don't have a subscription, the MC should suffice.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Hi WSB Readers:
We're still soliciting feedback about the new WSB format, which has been simplified to make it easier to read on mobile devices. In particular, what are your thoughts about the earnings section at the bottom? Do you prefer the condensed version currently provided, with a link to more details? Or do you prefer that the full earnings list be included in WSB itself, even if the list becomes quite lengthy during earnings season?
Please weigh in on this or any other comments/suggestions you may have.
Merck KGaA (MKGAF.PK) reports a Q2 net EPS loss of €0.40 ($0.58), vs. profit of €0.84 a year earlier. Revenue +16% to €2.56B. For 2011, Merck expects operating profit of about €1B, below guidance given in April, due to one-time adjustments. [View news story]
Thanks for your comment. An earlier version of this post had incorrectly included the ticker for Merck & Co. instead of Merck KGaA. The post has since been fixed.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
So did we! It was a good way to kick off the morning, and Wall Street Breakfast. But we're trying to ensure that WSB is as great a product when read on a mobile phone as it is when read on the site, and unfortunately the cup was crowding out WSB's content.
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
The earnings summary, plus earnings from lots of stocks that didn't make the summary, can be found on the Market Currents earnings page (here: seekingalpha.com/curre...).
The link is also included above in WSB, next to "Earnings Results."
What Seeking Alpha Is Doing To Prevent Paid Stock Promotion [View article]
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
As you mentioned, we do champion the crowd-sourced nature of our platform. We believe that an open platform which allows for rigorous debate helps investors make better decisions, and the recent Purdue study confirmed the incredible predictive nature of SA's crowd-sourced platform with regards to short- and long-term stock movement. (You can find more details about that study here: http://seekingalpha.co...)
We don't want to create classes of "haves" and "have nots," nor do we believe that we have done so. Most research platforms either keep their research behind a paywall forever, or share only a small fraction of their research publicly. At Seeking Alpha, ~90% of our research is publicly available from the moment of publication. Approximately 10% of SA's research is selected for the PRO subscription service, and each and every PRO article is made available to all of Seeking Alpha's audience after the initial 24 hours. This gives our audience of over 3.1 million registered users and 9 million monthly unique visitors unprecedented access to research targeted at institutional investors.
Our PRO service is primarily geared at buysiders and other market professionals, but we're always looking for ways to provide additional value to the entire SA community. In the past 12 months alone, we've brought on-board 1,680 new contributors (bringing our total to nearly 9,000), launched a new article category spotlighting analysis by industry experts, simplified the site navigation, and rolled out a significant update to our mobile apps. All SA users have free access to over 470,000 articles and over 4,000,000 comments (no, those are not typos).
We will continue to do our best to provide value for the entire SA audience. I'd love to hear any additional suggestions you may have; feel free to contact me via direct message.
Best,
Rachael Granby
Director, SA PRO
Seeking Alpha Crowd Wisdom Predicts Future Stock Returns [View article]
Thanks for your comment. I wanted to clarify a key point about SA PRO. We do publish excellent articles as part of our PRO subscription platform, and this platform is indeed geared at market professionals, but ALL site users - whether they're subscribers or not - have a window to read each PRO article.
PRO subscribers get a 24-hour early look at our PRO research. After the initial 24 hours, the articles are made publicly available to the entire Seeking Alpha audience, and you can find them on quote pages, the homepage, in the various SA newsletters, etc. Those articles remain publicly available to SA users for 30 days, and then enter the PRO research library which is available exclusively to subscribers.
We've published over 6,300 PRO articles so far, all of which were available to all SA users for 30 days. Subscribers continue to get access to these articles, providing them with unparalleled coverage of small- and mid-cap stocks.
In other words, everyone wins.
Best,
Rachael Granby
Seeking Alpha PRO
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
"30-day return of all Alpha-Rich ideas: 4.8% (vs. 2.01% SPDR S&P 500 return)"
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
The short answer, of course, is that no, not every Alpha-Rich article outperforms, though the aggregate performance is excellent (details below).
SA Pro subscribers get early access to Alpha-Rich articles, which contain high-conviction long or short opportunities. These articles are made publicly available 24 hours later. In each Wall Street Breakfast, we highlight two Alpha-Rich articles that have recently become publicly available (that's the "Alpha-Rich Stocks To Watch" section) and two articles that have performed exceptionally well.
We choose to highlight the exceptional performers because we're proud of how well out contributors have called these opportunities, because Alpha-Rich articles are consistently of a high caliber and because we want to communicate to readers the value inherent in a Pro subscription.
As of the beginning of July, Alpha-Rich articles in aggregate have outperformed the market:
2-day return of all Alpha-Rich ideas: 1.1% (vs. 0.17% SPDR S&P 500 return)
30-day return of all Alpha-Rich ideas: 4.8% (vs. 2.01% SPDR S&P 500 return)
30-day performance of the top 20% of all Alpha-Rich ideas: 29% (vs. 1.65% SPDR S&P 500 return)
You're welcome to check out the full list of Alpha-Rich articles here (http://bit.ly/16DBQvr) or in the Alpha-Rich section of the homepage.
For more information about SA Pro or our Alpha-Rich articles, you can contact me via direct message, or read more here (http://bit.ly/QEO4Ta).
Best,
Rachael
Director, SA Pro (and proud former author of WSB. Nice to see some familiar faces here, and some new ones.)
Privatized Prisons: Public Relations Nightmare But A Pretty Great Business [View article]
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
We've made a few changes to Wall Street Breakfast recently, as you've noticed. Our goal is to make WSB both incredibly useful and easy to read, whether on a mobile device or on the website. To this end, we're trying out a format where we include only the links that provide the most value for our readers - in this case, deeper opinion and analysis of the topics at hand.
When a story is an exclusive, we of course provide attribution to the original source. As you noted, this is important for preserving the integrity of the site. In the case of the Social Security story you mentioned, though Bloomberg and other sites carried the news, the original source is actually the government report referenced above, which can be found here: http://1.usa.gov/JWiWEU
Your feedback, and the feedback of all our readers, is crucial to making WSB the fantastic product it is, so please keep the comments coming.
Best,
Rachael
Seeking Alpha Passes One Million Members -- 5 Things You Need To Know [View article]
Apollo Global Management (APO) is leading a group that is close to buying El Paso's (EP) oil-exploration business for around $7B, sources say, with a deal announcement possible as soon as today. [View news story]
MasterCard (MA +1.9%) CEO Ajay Banga tells the Nikkei business daily that the deleveraging cycle in the U.S. is "reaching an end," but warns that until housing and unemployment improve, "you can't say that the consumer is in a better place." (submitted by Holly Thompson) [View news story]
The WSJ reports that President Obama plans to nominate Harvard finance professor Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell - a former Bush official and P-E exec - to fill the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board. [View news story]
It's a fair criticism. On the one hand, we do try to limit how often we link to articles behind paywalls. On the other hand, we would be doing Market Currents readers a disservice if we skipped salient stories simply because some sources are behind a paywall, especially when we're talking about such a mainstream source as the WSJ. As a middle ground, we provide the in-text link as a courtesy but generally try to encapsulate the crux of the story in the Market Current itself. That way, those who want to click through for additional information can do so and can handle the paywall as they see fit. For those who don't want to click through or don't have a subscription, the MC should suffice.
Hope this helps, and thanks for the feedback.
~Rachael Granby
Deputy Managing Editor, Market Currents
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
We're still soliciting feedback about the new WSB format, which has been simplified to make it easier to read on mobile devices. In particular, what are your thoughts about the earnings section at the bottom? Do you prefer the condensed version currently provided, with a link to more details? Or do you prefer that the full earnings list be included in WSB itself, even if the list becomes quite lengthy during earnings season?
Please weigh in on this or any other comments/suggestions you may have.
Thanks,
Rachael
Merck KGaA (MKGAF.PK) reports a Q2 net EPS loss of €0.40 ($0.58), vs. profit of €0.84 a year earlier. Revenue +16% to €2.56B. For 2011, Merck expects operating profit of about €1B, below guidance given in April, due to one-time adjustments. [View news story]
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [View article]
The link is also included above in WSB, next to "Earnings Results."