Mick Weinstein's Comments

Google Real-Times Tweets, But Is It Breaking the Rules?

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:15:44 -0500

That's metadata that will get increasingly busy, which is probably why Google chose not to show it. For example, the new retweet that Twitter implemented places the retweeter in the metadata, I believe. It has been accepted practice to show this metadata - the Twitter user's client - but it's not clear to me that it adds sufficient value to the user to justify its placement in all contexts, like Google results.

'December Effect' Bodes Well for Hedge Funds, Equities

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:45:23 -0500

We've corrected the chart with the proper Hennessee data - thanks.

On Nov 30 06:37 PM FINalternatives wrote:

> CORRECTION: Typo in the chart for 1998 -- the Hennessee Hedge Fund
> Index was down a mere 0.28%, not 28%...apologies.

Leveraged ETFs: A Seeking Alpha Expert Panel

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:49:10 -0500

Hi Jim - when we start at the top of the hour, you'll see a place above to leave a comment for the discussion. Those are moderated though, so it won't appear right away.

Salary Caps and Driving Innovation: What the U.S. Can Learn from the NFL and NBA

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:29:48 -0400

This addresses another problem entirely from the executive salary-cap at bailout recipients issue, so I don't see why the direct comparison. There's no reason to turn away from the former to consider the latter.

Also, the markets for NBA draft picks and smart graduates are entirely different (former defined by extreme scarcity), and the NBA salary cap - the team-based cap as well - has a entirely different aim than what you're proposing.

Do you honestly want to end the open bidding market for young smart people out of school? If we have a problem now of Wall St taking all the best young minds, why should we make those young people pay the price by limiting their options?

Gold: Is Now the Time to Buy?

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:57:46 -0400

Jeff, apologies for the earlier headline applied to this article ('Why It's Not the Time To Buy Gold') - we've switched it back to your original. We try to apply the most accurate headline we can, but at times the change we make fails to capture the author's intent. Please feel free to contact me or your editor whenever you aren't happy with how we've handled your articles, and we'll deal with it right away.

To address a few other things that came up here: (1) I can assure everyone that the Seeking Alpha editorial team has absolutely no bias or agenda with regard to the direction of gold or any security, (2) in deciding whether to publish a submission or not, we do not discriminate in any way against more popular authors, and (3) Editors' Picks are chosen by the individual editor who publishes the piece, based on the following 3 criteria: rigor of research, uniqueness and quality of the argument, and shelf-life of the article (since EPs stay linked from our sidebars for awhile, we prefer to give them to articles that are not very time sensitive).

~ Mick Weinstein, Editor in Chief of Seeking Alpha

On Oct 14 11:09 AM Jeff Nielson wrote:

> Hi Zell.
>
> No, they don't edit my text (or that of other contributors) - there
> is simply too much volume for them to do that.
>
> However, whenever my popularity on the site starts growing too quickly,
> all of a sudden they refuse to publish most of my submissions.

>
> Then, once I 'cool down' in their stats my stuff starts appearing
> regularly again - although I no longer EVER get an "editor's pick".
>

ETFConnect Is No More

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:36:55 -0400

Very entertaining scene, Roger, but I imagine it was closer to this:

Nuveen Exec: 'We're in the CEF business, and some CEFs compete with ETFs - so why does our website provide data, including comparison data, on ETFs?'

ETFConnect Editor: 'Because we provide a popular service that places Nuveen and our products in front of our precise target market on a daily basis, and we get incoming links that make us an important part of the online discussion on exchange-traded products.'

NE: 'But some of these ETFs look a lot better than our CEFs. And I'm not interested in the online discussion - I'm interested in new CEF investors.'

ETFC E: 'If our CEF products are compelling, our position in the online discussion will draw many new investors to them.'

NE: 'Ahem... let's kill this.'

Lessons from a Market 'En Fuego'

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:30:32 -0400

Roger, your description of your investment process at this strange moment in the market, with lessons for all investors, is very much appreciated as always.

FINRA Fires Next Shot in War Against Leveraged ETFs

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:50:43 -0400

Is there any evidence that this will solve any significant systemic problem?

Why Yahoo Finance is giving Google Finance a noogie

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 07:45:38 -0400

I think the main factor is 'status quo bias' (a force James Surowiecki refers to in his excellent recent piece on healthcare reform: www.newyorker.com/talk...). Many of us set up our portfolios on YF in the mid- to late-90s, when it was far and away the best site to do so, and it takes an awful lot to move your central news and data portal for your portfolio away from there, after that. It has incredible sticking power, like the bank where you do your checking. They need to really drop the ball badly, or face a categorically better competitor, to lose their top spot.

Malware seen only when I've clicked through a link to an SA article

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 13:48:39 -0400

Thanks, we are aware of the malware issue and are documenting our effort to remove it on the instablog of our CTO, Koby Menachemi:
seekingalpha.com/insta...

News Links: The John Henry Fight of Man vs. Algorithm

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:30:41 -0400

Fascinating data point on Bit.ly and its product idea - and absolutely agree that the hybrid approach to algorithm/human is the sweet spot.

What If: The New New York Times

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 06:06:33 -0400

Agree, and this is just a slightly more radical form of where they'll end up anyway, even if those top journalists stay put.

How (and Why) to Replace the A.P.

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:54:49 -0400

I find your idea of pooling ad sales resources among publishers toward landing the best price for the linked-to article's ad to be very interesting, but that would require a much more formal association among publishers' sales teams, which currently see each other as competitors. And would it handcuff editors - eg. if the editor wants to link to a source with which her sales team doesn't have such an arrangement, what would she do? But intriguing, indeed.

Investing or Marketing? The Real Reason Lightspeed Invested in Ning at a Crazy Valuation

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:09:55 -0400

I wonder how much of this goes on in general in VC investing - hard to imagine the best funds engage heavily in this, but as Fred Wilson has stressed, one of the current problems in the field is too many players who shouldn't be there, competing for resources.

Dr. John Hussman

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:55:57 -0400

It was from Hussman's June 8 letter:
www.hussmanfunds.com/w...

Who Uses Online Discount Brokerages in Canada?

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:05:20 -0400

I wonder what the numbers are like for US clients of online brokerages... any reason they'd be significantly different?

SA Editor's Corner: Claims of corporate fraud on Seeking Alpha

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:05:03 -0400

Separately, Freya, the Editors' Pick tag does not mean that every factual claim within the article has been researched by our editorial team. It simply means that the editor who posted it thinks it is an exceptional post. While we try to check any facts that look suspect to us at the time of submission, we rely much more on our readers to dispute facts in articles, via our article dispute process:
seekingalpha.com/artic...

SA Editor's Corner: Claims of corporate fraud on Seeking Alpha

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:59:20 -0400

One Eye and Freya, I'd really like to understand better what you're referring to. Note that we have an article dispute process that we invest a lot of time on - please use it to dispute any fact in any article, and we'll look into it:
seekingalpha.com/artic...

Forget the Feds, Apple Is Doing Just Fine Wrecking the Wireless Business

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:36:38 -0400

So Apple's genius doesn't end at industrial design and software...

Google Drops a Nuclear Bomb on Microsoft. And It's Made of Chrome.

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:14:11 -0400

Seems like a threat to Apple as well. One of the reasons people prefer Apples is the lameness of Windows. Most are unaware of or unable to install Linux, but put a Google marketing machine behind a much better Chrome OS and that will surely take share from the more expensive option, Apple.

Great piece by Matthew Rafat explains why Madoff victims don't deserve compensation, or sympathy: Investors "thought they were buying membership into an exclusive club shielded from the vagaries of the stock market... Well, it was an exclusive group, all right - a group of connected, rich suckers who thought they were getting a sweet deal unavailable to Main Street."

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:46:09 -0400

Many of the investors were not rich by most standards.

Seeking Alpha: An Andersonian Free Success Story

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:34:57 -0400

Absolutely, Stone Fox - that's why I said the rewards are 'not immediately monetary' - many (if not most) SA contributors are promoting paid services (money management, subscription newsletter, etc.) alongside their articles and that's a model that works really well.

On Jun 30 01:14 PM Stone Fox Capital wrote:

> most people on this site though write for monetary reasons. Maybe
> not from SA, but from getting SA readers to use their services.

Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton says Google (GOOG) - the big bad 'digital vampire' - is "sucking the blood" out of the newspaper business. But fear not. Hinton says DJ parent News Corp. (NWS) is working on a consolidated platform to help its papers and those of other publishers hawk their digital wares.

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:45:34 -0400

Just bizarre. How DJ and some other publishers continue to blame Google for their woes is completely beyond me. These are smart people - how can they completely misunderstand the structure and economics of the web??

Live Discussion: The Dollar, Inflation and Protecting Your Portfolio

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:05:33 -0400

thotdoc and Fighting Yoda: It will be in the box just above on this page - a text-based live discussion with comments and questions from SA readers.

Live Discussion: The Dollar, Inflation and Protecting Your Portfolio

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:46:55 -0400

Head of Dog: Yes, you will be able to reply the discussion right here.

On Jun 17 12:57 PM Head of Dog wrote:

> Seeking Alpha editors,
> Will the panel discussion be recorded for later consumption for those
> who can't make the live showing?

The State and Local Government Crisis Looms Larger

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:03:00 -0400

Very interesting, and concerning. I'd like some historical perspective on this - have budget gaps in state/local govt. even been so deep?

Hedge Fund Datapoint of the Day: James Biden's 10% Placement Fee

Fri, 15 May 2009 10:55:06 -0400

The 10% couldn't have come off the top of the investor's position, so how did the hedge funds manage to pay that 10% fee to multiple feeder fund-of-funds?

How Should We Improve Seeking Alpha's Comment Rating System?

Fri, 15 May 2009 03:35:32 -0400

ramisle, thanks for this. I don't know what article you refer to. We have an article dispute system for matters like this, and we're very quick to respond to any material errors in articles we publish. Would you please follow the steps here
seekingalpha.com/artic...

and we'll look into it right away.
Thanks,
Mick Weinstein
Editor in Chief
Seeking Alpha

On May 14 06:10 PM ramisle wrote:

> I would hope that SA would be more concerned with editorial integrity.
>
> Perhaps it isn't just the comments that need to be policed.
> Take for instance a recent article that made recommendations of high
> yield dividend stocks, and it turns out the dividends had been cancelled
> on half of them. The author was called to task for this, but not
> before the article appeared on Yahoo and MSN Money. That can't be
> good for SA's rep.
> Maybe some kind of arbitration system could be used for misuse of
> SA.
> Such as an author who spams everyone else's articles. Or consistently
> misrepresents the facts.

WSJ's Social Media Rules for Journalists

Thu, 14 May 2009 09:54:04 -0400

Great post, Fred, thanks. The NYT released similar guidelines a few months back, I think.

Social media in Twitter/FB form may present the clearest conflict yet between traditional vs. new media. Traditional journalism relies heavily on masks (anonymous sources, faceless reporters), control (of distribution, information and readers) and scarcity - and all of these are under threat by social media. Note that all of the items you name show deep concern for withholding information - about the story, process, organization and journalist.

Cisco: Order Inflows Insufficient to Arrest Steep Revenue Declines

Tue, 12 May 2009 10:04:06 -0400

Great work, Naveen.

Mick Weinstein's Comments

Google Real-Times Tweets, But Is It Breaking the Rules?

'December Effect' Bodes Well for Hedge Funds, Equities

Leveraged ETFs: A Seeking Alpha Expert Panel

Salary Caps and Driving Innovation: What the U.S. Can Learn from the NFL and NBA

Gold: Is Now the Time to Buy?

ETFConnect Is No More

Lessons from a Market 'En Fuego'

FINRA Fires Next Shot in War Against Leveraged ETFs

Why Yahoo Finance is giving Google Finance a noogie

Malware seen *only* when I've clicked through a link to an SA article

News Links: The John Henry Fight of Man vs. Algorithm

What If: The New New York Times

How (and Why) to Replace the A.P.

Investing or Marketing? The Real Reason Lightspeed Invested in Ning at a Crazy Valuation

Dr. John Hussman

Who Uses Online Discount Brokerages in Canada?

SA Editor's Corner: Claims of corporate fraud on Seeking Alpha

SA Editor's Corner: Claims of corporate fraud on Seeking Alpha

Forget the Feds, Apple Is Doing Just Fine Wrecking the Wireless Business

Google Drops a Nuclear Bomb on Microsoft. And It's Made of Chrome.

Seeking Alpha: An Andersonian Free Success Story

Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton says Google (GOOG) - the big bad 'digital vampire' - is "sucking the blood" out of the newspaper business. But fear not. Hinton says DJ parent News Corp. (NWS) is working on a consolidated platform to help its papers and those of other publishers hawk their digital wares.

Live Discussion: The Dollar, Inflation and Protecting Your Portfolio

Live Discussion: The Dollar, Inflation and Protecting Your Portfolio

The State and Local Government Crisis Looms Larger

Hedge Fund Datapoint of the Day: James Biden's 10% Placement Fee

How Should We Improve Seeking Alpha's Comment Rating System?

WSJ's Social Media Rules for Journalists

Cisco: Order Inflows Insufficient to Arrest Steep Revenue Declines

Malware seen only when I've clicked through a link to an SA article