www.SiliconInvestor.com
FIGURE 1: THE HOME PAGE OF SILICONINVESTOR.COM
At the risk of sounding like I'm taking a shot, there was a day when Silicon Investor (siliconinvestor.com) was a smoking-hot website. Not coincidentally, those days were also ones during which "silicon" had the same buzz to it that gold did in the late 1970s-or steam power in the early 19th century. As the name suggests, Silicon Investor was once synonymous with the high-tech investment craze of the 1990s. Five years ago, Beth Kwon of TheStreet.com reported that SI, as Silicon Investor was affectionately known at the time, had "long been considered a sane destination in the arguably insane world of Internet stock message boards."
Kwon might have considered SI past its prime (her article was titled, "Silicon Investor Relegated To Message-Board Back Seat"), but far more discomfort was headed SI's way, as being merely passé gave way to charges that it was becoming a home for investment ill repute as one of its allegedly more widely read posters was sentenced in May 2000 to a $20,000 fine and four months in federal prison for felony mail fraud ("This Silicon Investor Is Now Anthony @FederalDetention.gov"). And shortly after that, there was this little thing called the NASDAQ meltdown …
But if the financial marketplace is composed mostly of stories about advancers and decliners, winners and losers, the Internet remains a place where survivors can gather, lick their wounds, and lay in wait for their next opportunity to shine. The bull market in stocks that is now more than two years old has brought back everyone from George Gilder (of Telecosm fame) and James K. Glassman (of "Dow 30,000" fame) to Mary Meeker (the Internet stock guru) and Jim Cramer (whose website, TheStreet.com, may be the quintessential post-bubble survivor).
All of this makes it an interesting time to peek back in on Silicon Investor to see how that website, however relegated to the "message-board back seat" (take that!), and its merry band of stock-picking survivors are faring in recent days. What I saw was a testament to the perseverance of those who still believe there is wisdom (if not always strength) in numbers and that the swing trader stealing time on his lunch hour to trade just might have as much insight on a given stock over the next few days or weeks as the pinstriped analysts whose fortunes have fallen since the bubble burst.
SOME THINGS DON'T CHANGE
Surfing over to Silicon Investor, the first thing you notice is that while the symbols have changed, the passion for investment discussion and debate has not slowed one bit. The list of current "hot investment discussions" includes names from long ago, names such as Intel and Applied Materials, as well as conversation about what some say are the current bubble stocks, such as Google.
That said, when I clicked over to take a closer look at all of the discussion boards, I was surprised at the volume of commentary. With more than 50 separate discussions going on involving topics from aerospace and automotive stocks to short-term trading and value investing, it is hard to believe that an investor or trader wouldn't find somebody writing about something he or she was also interested in reading more about. More important, most of the discussions are current, with several entries dated as recently as today (September 14, 2005). Of course, the option to add new discussion threads suggests that the possibility of growth should SI continue to attract members and readers (both membership and readership are free).
Also on the homepage of Silicon Investor.com is the SI sentiment rating, a single-stock rating/voting poll available to members. It is anyone's guess whether the poll results-which come from those posting in single-stock message threads-are best viewed as contrary indicators or as savvy hints from the hoi polloi. But the poll does again suggest that regular Joe and Jane traders and investors still see Silicon Investor as a destination worth browsing to.
Silicon Investor is still in transition from what it was during the boom-time years to what it will be here in the first decade of the 21st century. Calling itself a "work in progress" with its new platform, Silicon Investor is nevertheless encouraging new visitors to join their community of independent retail traders and welcoming back those who remember the silicon salad days.
And for those who are still looking for places on the Internet where they can swap stories of stocks past, stocks present, and stocks yet to be, Silicon Investor is showing that, back seat or no, it is still a place worth spending time. And should SI ever regain anything close to its old 1990s-era glory, I don't doubt there will be more than one message-board poster who will swear he or she knew SI would be "back" all along.
-David Penn, Technical Writer
- SiliconInvestor.com
Originally published in the November 2005 issue of Technical Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES magazine. All rights reserved. © Copyright 2005, Technical Analysis, Inc.