4 ms·

Don't take this the wrong way but I've had a quick glance at your website and I don't see what's different from your competitors. Looking at the homepage all I

Don't take this the wrong way but I've had a quick glance at your website and I don't see what's different from your competitors. Looking at the homepage all I see is "yet another" .... yet another screening tool, yet another charting tool, yet another analyst expectations tool, yet another watchlist tool. And frankly, for a company that claims its all about "investment education for everyone", I don't know why you are selling stuff that does not work. Screening tools don't work. They don't work as a pure concept (i.e. there's no magic screen to make money / avoid loosing money). They don't work on the basis that you are mostly screening against lagging data (company reported financials). In the right hands screening tools can sometimes give you something resembling a "shortlist", but there's still a whole load of donkey work to be done after that to verify/validate. Technical analysis (reading tea leaves on charts) doesn't work either. Analyst expectations ? Give me a break. Most analysts are sell-side, not buy-side. Its like come on guys. If you're about "investment education for everyone" then you really need to do the Right Thing (TM) and explain to people there's no magic wand, there's no shortcut to hard work, and explain to people what they really should be doing, i.e. understanding what they are investing in (understand the company, understand the industry, understand the geo-political context), and explaining people how to evaluate their appetite for risk and how to invest within that risk profile.

hippofluff 5y ago
Hi! Not taking this the wrong way at all, I appreciate you taking the time to share these valuable thoughts. "explain to people there's no magic wand, there's no shortcut to hard work, and explain to people what they really should be doing" - we could not agree more, I'd go further to say this is what we are building, so we are going to dive deep to make sure we are putting across the right message when users first hit the website. (Side note, I think you'd love Daniel Pronk's Youtube channel!) I agree about screeners, Stock Unlock doesn't have screeners. I am curious what other sites you have used that have what we do in the "free form" tool (maybe bloomberg terminal but they cost around 25k a year-ish)? Also a huge angle on this is the embedded education, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. The embedded education has been helping newer investors feel comfortable/learn terms/learn how to analyze financials on their own. We find many other sites have sub par design or they present things in a way that assumes the user is already an investing pro/or has a finance degree As for analyst data I actually agree, I had a light argument with founders about this but "lost" since many investors and most of our users expect this. But for me personally, I never listen to analysts. And low and behold... it's one of our most viewed pages after insights tab and free form tool. Again, thanks for being honest. I appreciate that
- traceroute66 5y ago
  > Stock Unlock doesn't have screeners "Stock Unlock quickly analyzes any stock and highlights the positives and negatives we find" is basically the same thing just on a per-stock rather than screener basis ? The animation on your website is basically showing that, assigning red/green flags based on the usual screening suspects. Unless you are going to tell me that output is specifically adapted to each individual company and the industry where it operates. But I doubt that. Since to do that correctly requires the sort of manual work analysts do, you can't automate it.
  - hippofluff 5y ago
    > Unless you are going to tell me that output is specifically adapted to each individual company and the industry where it operates. But I doubt that. That's what we do! For example, if you look at a REIT stock like "bxp" that will have different insights than BAC which is a bank stock. Same for MSFT, which is not a REIT or a bank, and must have different financial metrics to care about. No automations, we are working HARD and coding in a bunch of static text/education/etc (200+ pages and counting of custom education content to date). Daniel Pronk is the content creator and creates the product specs for how we analyze different industries. We actually aren't doing anything too fancy here, you request a ticker, we pull it's financials, run analysis on them, then print that to the user. MOST importantly imo, we have detailed explanation for everything/never push our users, but rather guide/teach our users how to analyze and interpret these things for themselves so they can make their own decisions. If you have time to crawl through the tool/click around I'd be curious to see what you think. Again, I am not taking this as offense, I'm grateful you're giving raw feedback. It helps us improve!
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > if you look at a REIT stock like "bxp" that will have different insights than BAC which is a bank stock. Same for MSFT, which is not a REIT or a bank, and must have different financial metrics to care about Do you show non-GAAP measures for its divisions? That would be neat. From the front page, this looks like an interesting, if somewhat undifferentiated, analysis tool. (See most brokers’ free stock screening/filtering tools, for example, IB’s or Fidelity’s.) The UI appears well built. As a trainer for would-be brokers, it’s fine. Where it loses its education bona fides is in its stock-analysis orientation. That paradigm contains an implicit bias towards stock picking. (Versus, e.g., a portfolio-analysis paradigm.) The fundamentals approach is laudable. But it’s surface level. If you can’t construct financial statements from scratch, memorising a bunch of accounting ratios doesn’t drive first-principles understanding. If you can’t model a capital structure, you’re scratching at surface level stats mined to bits by the pros when e.g. a bond issuance is announced. All that said, your company could make money if it tapped into the take-a-screenshot-and-tweet market. It won’t help people understand. But many traders don’t care about that. That’s a valid target market.
raidicy 5y ago
>(understand the company, understand the industry, understand the geo-political context), and explaining people how to evaluate their appetite for risk and how to invest within that risk profile. Can you recommend any books/media for this specifically? I've often wanted this type of material but haven't been able to distinguish pop-economic feel-good/self-help books from high value ones.
FredPret 5y ago
> Screening tools don't work There are some very successful investors who might disagree with that assessment somewhat, to put it mildly
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Who? And how much of their success was due to screening tools?
  - FredPret 5y ago
    Well any of the ones that have made a profit, for starters. Even indexes like the S&P 500 are nothing but prefiltered lists of stocks. S&P’s criteria include size and industry. Buffet is famous for filtering out stocks by his own criteria, mainly focusing on the balance sheet. Nothing is certain, but a good filter increases the likelihood of profit, sometimes to a ridiculous degree.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      > Well any of the ones that have made a profit, for starters. Citation? I've made profit without ever looking at a screening tool or doing technical analysis. > Nothing is certain, but a good filter increases the likelihood of profit, sometimes to a ridiculous degree. Citation? Analysts do tons of technical analysis and fail to beat SPY. Buffet himself even made a Long Bet with someone to this point. I'm surprised you'd use him as an example...
      - FredPret 5y ago
        I just mentioned the S&P500 as an example of a filter. S&P500 is what SPY consists of. Also, filter != technical analysis. Filters can work on any indicator. I use them on fundamentals, as do Buffet, Munger, Graham, Dodd.
        endisneigh 5y ago
        OK, enjoy your billions with your filters.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
I agree with you almost completely, except where you have gripes about "lagging data." Every finance professional reads 10-K and 10-Qs, so I have no idea where you're coming from with this complaint. Where else are you getting finance information? CNBC? Teslarati? The technical analysis and analyst ratings crap needs to go, for sure. I'm tired of seeing that bs. They're immediate signals someone's peddling amateur hour.
altdataseller 5y ago
They need to make money and they can’t do so if people are putting their money into boring, index funds that outperform gambling on individual stocks.
- hippofluff 5y ago
  I agree with your sentiment here that gambling on stocks is bad. Our goal is to provide education and analysis tools, since we believe investing is not gambling. Even though, many people today treat it like it is. We don't make money/aren't incentivized on our users making/executing trades (unlike a lot of other services today). I understand that our product isn't going to interest everyone, there's nothing wrong with only investing in index funds. That being said, a lot of people take 5-15% of their money and put it into riskier investments. Also, a lot of newer investors are investing in causes/things they believe in as a social/environmental cause. By being supplied with investing education and tooling that most people are deprived of/never shown, we hope that we can remove the word "gamble" from long term investing
  - smt88 5y ago
    > since we believe investing is not gambling All investing is betting. Day-trading and forex "investing" are certainly gambling, and there is a lot of addiction among day-traders. Stock-picking is more controversial in terms of whether to call it gambling, but if we know that nearly 100% of individual investors won't beat the market in the long-run, then it seems a lot like a casino, where the house always wins.

hippofluff 5y ago

Hi! Not taking this the wrong way at all, I appreciate you taking the time to share these valuable thoughts. "explain to people there's no magic wand, there's no shortcut to hard work, and explain to people what they really should be doing" - we could not agree more, I'd go further to say this is what we are building, so we are going to dive deep to make sure we are putting across the right message when users first hit the website. (Side note, I think you'd love Daniel Pronk's Youtube channel!) I agree about screeners, Stock Unlock doesn't have screeners. I am curious what other sites you have used that have what we do in the "free form" tool (maybe bloomberg terminal but they cost around 25k a year-ish)? Also a huge angle on this is the embedded education, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. The embedded education has been helping newer investors feel comfortable/learn terms/learn how to analyze financials on their own. We find many other sites have sub par design or they present things in a way that assumes the user is already an investing pro/or has a finance degree As for analyst data I actually agree, I had a light argument with founders about this but "lost" since many investors and most of our users expect this. But for me personally, I never listen to analysts. And low and behold... it's one of our most viewed pages after insights tab and free form tool. Again, thanks for being honest. I appreciate that

traceroute66 5y ago
> Stock Unlock doesn't have screeners "Stock Unlock quickly analyzes any stock and highlights the positives and negatives we find" is basically the same thing just on a per-stock rather than screener basis ? The animation on your website is basically showing that, assigning red/green flags based on the usual screening suspects. Unless you are going to tell me that output is specifically adapted to each individual company and the industry where it operates. But I doubt that. Since to do that correctly requires the sort of manual work analysts do, you can't automate it.
- hippofluff 5y ago
  > Unless you are going to tell me that output is specifically adapted to each individual company and the industry where it operates. But I doubt that. That's what we do! For example, if you look at a REIT stock like "bxp" that will have different insights than BAC which is a bank stock. Same for MSFT, which is not a REIT or a bank, and must have different financial metrics to care about. No automations, we are working HARD and coding in a bunch of static text/education/etc (200+ pages and counting of custom education content to date). Daniel Pronk is the content creator and creates the product specs for how we analyze different industries. We actually aren't doing anything too fancy here, you request a ticker, we pull it's financials, run analysis on them, then print that to the user. MOST importantly imo, we have detailed explanation for everything/never push our users, but rather guide/teach our users how to analyze and interpret these things for themselves so they can make their own decisions. If you have time to crawl through the tool/click around I'd be curious to see what you think. Again, I am not taking this as offense, I'm grateful you're giving raw feedback. It helps us improve!
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > if you look at a REIT stock like "bxp" that will have different insights than BAC which is a bank stock. Same for MSFT, which is not a REIT or a bank, and must have different financial metrics to care about Do you show non-GAAP measures for its divisions? That would be neat. From the front page, this looks like an interesting, if somewhat undifferentiated, analysis tool. (See most brokers’ free stock screening/filtering tools, for example, IB’s or Fidelity’s.) The UI appears well built. As a trainer for would-be brokers, it’s fine. Where it loses its education bona fides is in its stock-analysis orientation. That paradigm contains an implicit bias towards stock picking. (Versus, e.g., a portfolio-analysis paradigm.) The fundamentals approach is laudable. But it’s surface level. If you can’t construct financial statements from scratch, memorising a bunch of accounting ratios doesn’t drive first-principles understanding. If you can’t model a capital structure, you’re scratching at surface level stats mined to bits by the pros when e.g. a bond issuance is announced. All that said, your company could make money if it tapped into the take-a-screenshot-and-tweet market. It won’t help people understand. But many traders don’t care about that. That’s a valid target market.

raidicy 5y ago

>(understand the company, understand the industry, understand the geo-political context), and explaining people how to evaluate their appetite for risk and how to invest within that risk profile. Can you recommend any books/media for this specifically? I've often wanted this type of material but haven't been able to distinguish pop-economic feel-good/self-help books from high value ones.

FredPret 5y ago

> Screening tools don't work There are some very successful investors who might disagree with that assessment somewhat, to put it mildly

endisneigh 5y ago
Who? And how much of their success was due to screening tools?
- FredPret 5y ago
  Well any of the ones that have made a profit, for starters. Even indexes like the S&P 500 are nothing but prefiltered lists of stocks. S&P’s criteria include size and industry. Buffet is famous for filtering out stocks by his own criteria, mainly focusing on the balance sheet. Nothing is certain, but a good filter increases the likelihood of profit, sometimes to a ridiculous degree.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    > Well any of the ones that have made a profit, for starters. Citation? I've made profit without ever looking at a screening tool or doing technical analysis. > Nothing is certain, but a good filter increases the likelihood of profit, sometimes to a ridiculous degree. Citation? Analysts do tons of technical analysis and fail to beat SPY. Buffet himself even made a Long Bet with someone to this point. I'm surprised you'd use him as an example...
    - FredPret 5y ago
      I just mentioned the S&P500 as an example of a filter. S&P500 is what SPY consists of. Also, filter != technical analysis. Filters can work on any indicator. I use them on fundamentals, as do Buffet, Munger, Graham, Dodd.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        OK, enjoy your billions with your filters.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

I agree with you almost completely, except where you have gripes about "lagging data." Every finance professional reads 10-K and 10-Qs, so I have no idea where you're coming from with this complaint. Where else are you getting finance information? CNBC? Teslarati? The technical analysis and analyst ratings crap needs to go, for sure. I'm tired of seeing that bs. They're immediate signals someone's peddling amateur hour.

altdataseller 5y ago

They need to make money and they can’t do so if people are putting their money into boring, index funds that outperform gambling on individual stocks.

hippofluff 5y ago
I agree with your sentiment here that gambling on stocks is bad. Our goal is to provide education and analysis tools, since we believe investing is not gambling. Even though, many people today treat it like it is. We don't make money/aren't incentivized on our users making/executing trades (unlike a lot of other services today). I understand that our product isn't going to interest everyone, there's nothing wrong with only investing in index funds. That being said, a lot of people take 5-15% of their money and put it into riskier investments. Also, a lot of newer investors are investing in causes/things they believe in as a social/environmental cause. By being supplied with investing education and tooling that most people are deprived of/never shown, we hope that we can remove the word "gamble" from long term investing
- smt88 5y ago
  > since we believe investing is not gambling All investing is betting. Day-trading and forex "investing" are certainly gambling, and there is a lot of addiction among day-traders. Stock-picking is more controversial in terms of whether to call it gambling, but if we know that nearly 100% of individual investors won't beat the market in the long-run, then it seems a lot like a casino, where the house always wins.