5 ms·

Thanks for the great feedback. Do you think people would be too protective of their strategies to participate though?

mikecsh 14y ago
You could keep the strategy hidden but allow users to follow the output signals. There are some sites which already do this or similar for both fundamental and technical strategies. Motley Fool comes to mind: http://caps.fool.com/ http://caps.fool.com/
- startuprob 14y ago
  That's a very interesting idea. We've looked at Collective 2 and Currensee as they've done some similar things. Very interesting...
  - mikecsh 14y ago
    Stocktwits also has some similar vibes, there are a few others and I can't remember the specific one I was thinking of right now.. http://stocktwits.com/ http://stocktwits.com/
    - startuprob 14y ago
      Yeah, we love stocktwits :)
ukoki 14y ago
Possibly. If you integrate with a trading platform you could always let other users subscribe to a strategy without knowing what the strategy is (eg they only know it's gained X% vs the S&P 500 in the last few months, the author's profile and that 5000 other users have 5MM invested in this strategy). However I have a feeling that a) the money from commissions and b) the feeling of being at the top of a list will compel a lot of people to share their strategies - people blog about their stock picks constantly. Also I'd love to see some left-field data about these companies eg: Google search volume, Wikipedia edits/day, mentions on Twitter, press releases, sentiment analysis of news articles etc...
- mdupenois 14y ago
  It's funny that you mention it because, as Rob said, we've been playing with the idea of adding a competitive edge, but the commissions is a cool idea. We were also considering a kind of achievements approach as well as a leaderboard but want to try and keep the idea of it as a tool as opposed to a toy. Love the data idea, in fact surplus of data is already a bit of an issue; we're running out of screen real-estate.
  - ukoki 14y ago
    of course - the alternative is to not share anything. With the data you have on your users, once you can isolate users who consistently come up with strategies that consistently make money after their creation date - well, you might as well set up a hedge fund on the side and give the product away for free.
    - mdupenois 14y ago
      Hah, yeah, unfortunately the legal team at the incubator we're in suggests we might not survive too long as a company if we go down that route :)
      - shyn3 14y ago
        Your data is going to be insanely valuable if you can get good analysts working on your platform. I was wondering if you could elaborate as to why they feel this way? I would love to know that the top X % of traders are willing to play with my money in a transparent manner.
      - ukoki 14y ago
        haha fair enough - thinking about it there's all kinds of nefarious ways you could use the data. Looking at your product a bit more, this might be complicating things a little and it's going to hammer your database but I'd love the ability to fit variables to a strategy - eg I want a strategy like "IF X day moving sample average for GOOG is better than Y day moving sample average for GOOG buy ELSE sell" But I don't really know the best X and Y, so I'd like to leave those as variables and have the software find the optimum values based on historical data.

You could keep the strategy hidden but allow users to follow the output signals. There are some sites which already do this or similar for both fundamental and technical strategies. Motley Fool comes to mind: http://caps.fool.com/ http://caps.fool.com/

startuprob 14y ago
That's a very interesting idea. We've looked at Collective 2 and Currensee as they've done some similar things. Very interesting...
- mikecsh 14y ago
  Stocktwits also has some similar vibes, there are a few others and I can't remember the specific one I was thinking of right now.. http://stocktwits.com/ http://stocktwits.com/
  - startuprob 14y ago
    Yeah, we love stocktwits :)

ukoki 14y ago

Possibly. If you integrate with a trading platform you could always let other users subscribe to a strategy without knowing what the strategy is (eg they only know it's gained X% vs the S&P 500 in the last few months, the author's profile and that 5000 other users have 5MM invested in this strategy). However I have a feeling that a) the money from commissions and b) the feeling of being at the top of a list will compel a lot of people to share their strategies - people blog about their stock picks constantly. Also I'd love to see some left-field data about these companies eg: Google search volume, Wikipedia edits/day, mentions on Twitter, press releases, sentiment analysis of news articles etc...

mdupenois 14y ago
It's funny that you mention it because, as Rob said, we've been playing with the idea of adding a competitive edge, but the commissions is a cool idea. We were also considering a kind of achievements approach as well as a leaderboard but want to try and keep the idea of it as a tool as opposed to a toy. Love the data idea, in fact surplus of data is already a bit of an issue; we're running out of screen real-estate.
- ukoki 14y ago
  of course - the alternative is to not share anything. With the data you have on your users, once you can isolate users who consistently come up with strategies that consistently make money after their creation date - well, you might as well set up a hedge fund on the side and give the product away for free.
  - mdupenois 14y ago
    Hah, yeah, unfortunately the legal team at the incubator we're in suggests we might not survive too long as a company if we go down that route :)
    - shyn3 14y ago
      Your data is going to be insanely valuable if you can get good analysts working on your platform. I was wondering if you could elaborate as to why they feel this way? I would love to know that the top X % of traders are willing to play with my money in a transparent manner.
    - ukoki 14y ago
      haha fair enough - thinking about it there's all kinds of nefarious ways you could use the data. Looking at your product a bit more, this might be complicating things a little and it's going to hammer your database but I'd love the ability to fit variables to a strategy - eg I want a strategy like "IF X day moving sample average for GOOG is better than Y day moving sample average for GOOG buy ELSE sell" But I don't really know the best X and Y, so I'd like to leave those as variables and have the software find the optimum values based on historical data.