Suggestion | Your Money Where Your Mouth Is - Suggestion For A New Stockopedia Feature.

25th Aug '10 by hannibal

13 comments 2498 reads

Each day there is endless discussion on these boards regarding a limited number of very popular, mainly E&P related, companies. While it soon becomes obvious over time who's view and opinions count and who is ramping/talking nonsense, wouldn't it be nice to have some numeric indicator as to the investment quality of each member?

As a new feature for stockopedia, I suggest a portfolio management feature. Here you would enter your portfolio details, e.g. holdings, quantity, time of purchase. These details would be kept confidential and even encrypted, however other users would be able to see your average annual return and return to date.

While not neccessery for the reasons mentioned above, wouldn't this be a lot of fun? Wouldn't it also cut a lot of nonsense we get?

Thoughts, ideas and suggestions please!

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StrollingMolby

25th Aug '10

This could be achieved via the public Funds option, no? Do you accept the challenge? ;o)

Fangorn

I don't think so. Last time I used the public funds to attempt to buy anything I never managed to get filled despite getting filled for real on my online trading account at the same level. The public funds was simply unwieldy so I stopped bothering many months ago.

Unfortunately there is no trading within the spread within the public Funds - the price is the price, so limit orders are of limited use.

I was unable to even trade at the offered price!

So I haven't updated,managed or traded in ages. More's the pity as it was quite good fun.

AnonymousUser858

Excellent idea in principle - which was surely exactly the original intention of the portfolio feature

There are some difficulties and imperfections but it would probably give an indication of underlying ability even if it were not perfect

Why don;t we ask S'pedia to co-ordinate it?

hannibal

Tournesol,

I think it would be great to ask Stockopedia to organise something like this. It would simply require some simple server side scripting, a database that could pull prices from ADVFN or google finance; this would take some time to iron out but is not that complex .

I'm not sure what the others are reffering to by public funds. My idea does not involve changing your practice in any way. You buy and sell using your existing platform, all you do is update your transactions on Stockopedia which would act as database of your porfolio, kind of like google portfolio. The benefits of this is that when you come to check stock news & discussion, you can also see how your portfolio is doing, other users would also be able to see your annual returns and annual return to date.

So next time somebody suggests company X as an unbeatable investment, you can see prominently their negative return for the last few years.

A key feature and pherhaps the most important, is that your portfolio holdings, quantaties and transaction dates would remain ANONYMOUS, this is nobody elses businesses, however you would by clicking a button be able to see people's annual return in percentage terms, which is reasonable giving that most of us are enterprising investors.

There is also a time saving component. At the momment I visit a porfolio site to check my holdings, then log into Stockopedia. Bringing a portfolio feature to stockopedia would improve the utility of this already excellent resource. You could also add stocks to your watchlists or set up theoretical portfolios.

This all ofcourse would depend on a gentlemen's agreement, that no one where to fiddle the figures, but then this entire Stockopedia project depends on that.

Hannibal

er you do know that Stockopedia already has a portfolio feature don't you? Just check the menu tabs under "portfolio" and also under "fund"

problem in using it in the way required for this initiative is that it uses slightly delayed real time prices - ie 20 mins delayed or some such.

so if I buy some shares in the real world this morning at 8 then when I try to enter an identical transaction into the S'pedia portfolio I can't do it because I have to accept whatever price S'pedia portfolio service is reflecting at the time I enter the transaction

So it can;t be used as a shadowing facility

But it can be used as a fantasy portfolio which can act as a surrogate - so might be better than nothing

doverbeach

26th Aug '10

One major problem would be the restriction to UK listed shares.

db

djpreston

Indeed Db

Plus there is a problem for people such as me.

What stocks do I put in?

As I run mandates with radically different objectives - income, growth, balanced, ethical, total return, speculative, collectivised etc, with many different preferences and objections, how would I reflect that? It isnt just shares either - how to accout for say $ based debt issues or euro issues etc etc.

Plus, as you say, there is the overseas question. I have a very large amount of overseas stocks....

Still think that some form of rating system would be worthwhile though.

perhaps we could have a system like the Eurovision scoring system - we all get to vote for say 5 posters we rate. First gets 5 points, second 4 etc etc

Idea being to rate their value as contributors - not merely the volume of their input or the no of post recommendations (which is affected by volume)

I'd have little difficulty identifying the 5 people I regard as adding most value and suspect others would be able to do same

But there again such a system would not tell me anything new - I already know which posters I regard as top people and which are lower in the food chain

In reality I read everything written on topics of interest whoever writes it

and nothing on topics which do not interst me - whoever writes it

sirlurkalot

"Idea being to rate their value as contributors"

Isn't that what the number of followers shows? Trouble is that the S'pedia follower count is set up as increase in the last 1w, 1m, 1y, rather than total ever followers which would be more useful. Could there be a 5y or 10y number of followers - there's room for the tab?

Surely people should be able to evaluate arguments themselves without it mattering who wrote them? I'm against all indicators that build writers up as "gurus" to be followed unthinkingly. Its the ideas that matter, not who wrote them. If I could make a change to the S'pedia layout, it would be to set the page out so that the number of up-thumbs is more prominent and right next to the writer's name, to allow the page to be skimmed more quickly. And I'd have the writers name in larger case type, or maybe (better) in red at the existing size.

"But there again such a system would not tell me anything new - I already know which posters I regard as top people and which are lower in the food chain"

Yes, exactly. I only ever read a quarter or a half of posts on any BB thread, so its important that the layout assists skimming to pick out the ones fitting my "criteria" to read. I'm not all that troubled by "disruptive" posters (you know who they are), providing I can skim them out easily.

ohisay

As a new feature for stockopedia, I suggest a portfolio management feature. Here you would enter your portfolio details, e.g. holdings, quantity, time of purchase. These details would be kept confidential and even encrypted, however other users would be able to see your average annual return and return to date.

Er.. ..isnt this what the Public "Fantasy" funds do .There are around 120 people who have set up these.

Its not perfect but its interesting to see what posters are buying/selling and their performance - one of Stockopedias best features isnt it ?

nigelpm

28th Aug '10

Best way to achieve this IMHO is for Stockopedia to improve the funds feature. It's currently pretty good but could so with a spruce up.

Your Money Where Your Mouth Is - Suggestion for a new Stockopedia feature.

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Hannibal

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