Rachael Granby

George - a hearty congratulations! Looking forward to seeing all the wonderful things you and the SA team will accomplish!

David, thank you so much for everything you've done and everything you've built. It's amazing to see how far SA has come and we'll continue to work hard to keep you proud of the company's progress!

DWD Investing,

It's a good question. I would answer simply that different contributors have different motivations for writing on SA, and I suspect that won't change. Some like publishing on SA because they are working to build their personal brand, others to get more clients for their hedge funds and/or other professional services they offer outside SA. Some will keep writing on SA because they don't have a subscriber cap and the more they publish strong analysis, the more subscribers they'll attract. And the reason that I think often gets overlooked in these discussions - that many, many contributors write on SA because they enjoy sharing their investment ideas and discussing the various pros and cons with their investor peers on our platform.

So yes, it's possible that Chris DeMuth will reach his 1,000 subscriber cap and stop publishing articles (though, knowing Chris, I can't imagine that he would stop publishing just because he reached his subscriber cap). But the overall value proposition for writing on SA is still there, and (IMHO) stronger than ever.

We wouldn't repost without permission. We've spoken to the relevant parties and gotten approval to share Mr. Bernanke's columns on Seeking Alpha. These first few posts were columns Mr. Bernanke posted recently. Going forward, you'll be seeing the posts here without any significant delay.

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: https://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

Fishluvrain,

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

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)"

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.

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: https://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

Congrats to SA, and to our awesome contributors and users. Keep up the good work everyone!

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.

Yes, here's the link: https://s.nikkei.com/xV...

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.

Hope this helps, and thanks for the feedback.

~Rachael Granby
Deputy Managing Editor, Market Currents

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.

Thanks,
Rachael

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.

Thanks everyone for the feedback thus far about the formatting changes. Keep the suggestions coming!

Excluding the impact of the $600M U.K. bank payroll tax and a $550M SEC settlement, diluted EPS was $2.75. Including those charges, EPS was $1.85.

The post has been edited to make that distinction clearer. Thanks.

More details:

-AT&T had cited spectrum shortages as the main reason behind its decision to buy T-Mobile USA. The FCC wants to see additional information on the shortages claims, as well as details about under-used capacity, the companies' future plans and what drove certain subscribers to change companies.

-The FCC is also looking for information on AT&T/T-Mobile's potential plans to change the prices or other terms for providing "backhaul" to small carriers.

More details here: www.reuters.com/articl...

More details:

-AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson testified in front of the House subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet yesterday, and tried to spin the deal as a way to reach out to under-served parts of the country.

-Lawmakers were blunt about their skepticism but it's unclear whether that will have any practical impact on the deal's future, as the panel has no direct say on whether the deal can go forward.

-Meanwhile, over in California, state regulators said yesterday that they plan to investigate the deal. Louisiana has signaled it will likely launch an investigation as well.

More details here: www.reuters.com/articl...
and here:online.wsj.com/article...

More details:

-Citi is relying on the "safe harbor" provisions written into U.S. bankruptcy law, which allow certain financial transactions to be excluded from creditors' asset pool. The aim is to incentivize banks to keep providing key services to clients who face potential insolvency.

-Citi claims Lehman's collapse resulted in $1.26B of costs related to forex clearing, so even after keeping the collateral, Citi is still facing a net loss.

-Earlier this month, JPMorgan made similar "safe harbor" arguments to try to counter an $8.6B claim from Lehman's trustee.

More details here: www.reuters.com/articl...