A few minutes ago, on CNBC's Closing Bell this afternoon, a different concept for rating stocks surfaced. Whereas stock ratings heretofore primarily come from Wall Street firms et al, VETR derives stock ratings from the investing public. The founder claims there are algorithms in place to prevent "stuffing the ballot box" so to speak. VETR -- http://www.vetr.com/ -- went live yesterday. I have no opinion, nor have I seen any reviews or comments, on this yet, obviously, but the Q&A on CNBC attracted my attention. I signed up using my Twitter account, Facebook and LinkedIn are also usable, or you can create a separate account. Now, will all of this work or will it be more noise in the market chatter? Who knows? But I'm going to at least take a look-see. Giddyup. Perhaps the VETR interview will be available on CNBC's Closing Bell video clips later today
I can see why people would like the democratization of a process that a lot of people may view as shady, nontransparent and driven by insiders, but I do wonder how this will work. My first impression (admittedly without fully dipping into all the details) is that it could become a bit of a popularity contest, maybe even more so than Wall Street's approach to certain blue chip stocks. And a fickle one at that, based on hearsay and rumors rather than fundamentals. Plus, one of the reason people still need to observe Wall Street's ratings is because these are the recommendations handed out to their institutional clients, who effectively move the markets. Interesting idea - I just can't see it changing the industry.
Tip, FWIW: Adjust email settings depending upon how you feel about weeding your email account. I turned off all notifications as I'd rather just go to the website to research whatever interests me.
