Financial Kudos Blog

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Join us at our new blog address.  We've updated the features, look and feel of our blog.  

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We have liftoff!

Financial Kudos Announces Private Beta Launch of Groundbreaking Community for Investors

www.FinancialKudos.com Is the First Place Online Where People Can Share, Invest and Earn Rewards

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - June 9, 2009) - For years, investors searching for tips and information online have contended with messy message boards or restrictive character limits. Finally, there is a place to find quick, easy and relevant information about financial markets. Today, www.FinancialKudos.com, the first online community for investors where members can share, invest and earn rewards, announced its private beta launch. Prospective users are invited to visit www.FinancialKudos.com to request membership and learn more about the new incentive-driven community designed to reward members for their participation and contributions.

"We're pleased to announce the private beta launch of FinancialKudos.com, the first investor community that rewards its members for the quality of their participation," said Larry Margolis, Founder and CEO of Financial Kudos. "For the first time, online investors will have the opportunity to win awards and earn recognition from their peers for providing actionable investment ideas."

FinancialKudos.com invites users to reward one another for posting key trading information and sharing relevant investor tips by gifting "Kudos" points to reflect their appreciation for a good scoop or concept. At the end of each month, the members with highest number of Kudos earned and most notable community contributions will be awarded prizes including a portion of the membership revenue.

FinancialKudos.com offers a robust new interactive community for investors with key elements including:

-- Alerts sent to members to provide real-time updates on posts or
 investor information on FinancialKudos.com through Twitter and Facebook
 
-- Simple three-step process for creating new posts not limited to 140
 characters and commenting on existing threads with multimedia component
 that allows posting of charts, videos and photographs
 
-- Easy-to-access database searchable by company name, stock symbol, news
 topic or recent trend
 
-- Leaderboard updated in real time to reflect most active and
 influential community members
 

FinancialKudos.com will scale from private beta launch to full national launch in the coming weeks, and invites interested parties to learn more at www.FinancialKudos.com and on Twitter @financialkudos.

About FinancialKudos.com

FinancialKudos.com is the only online financial social network that rewards members for participating in and contributing to the community with a portion of its membership revenue. Headquartered in New York City, FinancialKudos.com is the go-to online community for novice investors, seasoned professionals and everyone in between, and invites members to showcase their expertise to earn Kudos from their peers while gaining insight into tips and trends from one another. To learn more, please visit www.FinancialKudos.com or follow us on Twitter @financialkudos.

5-4-3-2-1 Launch!

It seems like the first post on this blog was a lifetime ago. We launched this blog on 3/13/2009 with the idea that we wanted to get insight into features and needs for our future membership group.  We thank you for your inspiration and ideas.  We have added many great ideas to the site and are pleased to announce that beginning tomorrow morning 6/9/2009 you can request an invitation to join our private beta.

The site will be activated early in the morning.  SImply navigate to www.financialkudos.com and click the private beta sign yup button.  We will provide you instructions as we add beta users.  You might have noticed the 'feedback' button on the left of this page (and all of our web pages)for your use,  we really appreciate your feedback!

Please follow @financialkudos on Twitter to see new posts and use the FaceBook connect feature to add your posts to your FaceBook wall.

Enjoy the launch and we hope the next 90 days will be even more productive than the last.  We also hope that the market continues to behave!

Attention Investors: Your new community is here!

We are in the process of putting the finishing touches on the beta release of the Financial Kudos community and we would like to show it off to a few users for a short 'alpha release'.  

To thank you for your efforts, you will be sporting a limited edition Kudos T-Shirt and enjoy free membership for a year - a $179.00 value!  All we ask is that you to add some content and give us some input for improving the site.

Send and email to larry@financialkudos.com and we will get the first group started early next week.

What to do with the free cash flow from TARP

Timothy Geithner told the Senate Banking Committee that he wants to sell the warrants acquired through the TARP program sooner rather than later.  He explained that he is not interested in holding these investments to "maximize value".  We were wondering what the government could do with the profits form the warrants and some of the excess receipts from the TARP payback. On idea is to build more stadiums - it appears to be helpings the Yankees - at the same time TARP could finance the payrolls for other baseball teams. (Just kidding of course).

On a serious note, how about making loans to small and new businesses which will foster the growth of our economy and employment? Sort of an SBA program on steroids. Sounds simple enough but wouldn't that solve a lot of problems in the future and create an optimistic sentiment for Americans?

I know I am simplifying the concept here but perhaps that's what we need.  Something to think about while on the beach or at the holiday barbecue this weekend.  Enjoy the time off.

Twitter - 3 options to avoid the extra noise

Last week I was reading Informaiton Week and saw an article by Art Wittman that mentioned the "signal to noise ratio" of Twitter.  Being an audio buff, this struck as the exact issue which can face Twitter users moving forward.  How do you filter the noise so that the posts your read are important to you?  I think there are a few really good alternatives out there.

1) TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com) does a good job at filtering the information stream.

2) Seesemic Desktop (www.desktop.seesmic.com) - my personal favorite filters the information flow and has added connectivity to FaceBook.

3) Twitter search has been added to the Twtitter home page - use it and find what you are looking for.

There are many others out there that I am sure are just as good.  The thought I wanted to convey is that while more is better and the real time Internet is amazing, you can loose focus and become terribly inefficient if you don't turn down the volume.

The New Auto Industry - The winds of change and loss of value.

Yesterday, Chrysler dealers received the bad news.  The franchise which they thought had value (often in excess of $3,000,000) is now worthless.  CNBC called them 'victims' and discussed the fact that since something had to change, somebody had to be a victim to save the industry.  Tough medicine to swallow  if you were the dealer who opened their mail to find out that their loss will fix the industry.

In speaking with an expert in the field a few weeks ago, I was told that the plan was underway for some time to consolidate dealers at the discretion of the factory with the help of the bankruptcy court. In other words the district managers and the folks in Detroit who helped to create this mess can decide who benefits and who looses.  These choices were not made on merit, or in many cases rational thinking, but rather at the whim of these newly ordained rulers of the franchise.

I am told that but for some legal actions which are tantamount to me telling my kids to stop fighting with each other, the dealers have no choice but to dismantle their businesses and figure out what to do with a car dealership and property in a really bad real estate market.

I guess the moral of the story is not so much that things change - they always do - but rather that just like stocks, a buy and hold strategy has no moment.  You need to keep moving and adapting - unless of course you made friends with the right people in Detroit or the equivalent in your industry.

My head is spinning - I am listening to CNBC.

Are you getting as tired as I am listening to the 'brains' on CNBC?  Last week they were talking about the return to better times - even some talk of the DOW testing longer term resistance levels.  Today, everyone seems to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed and is looking not for sunny and 80 degrees, but rather a beginning of a protracted cold war.  While I understand the need to give both sides of an argument, I am making the call for some consistency - especially when the economic data has not materially changed form one day to the next.

I don't mean to just pick on CNBC, they have been doing this for years.  Rather I would speak to all market participants that react instead of act to the big picture.  If the market is overdone, no problem just be a little bit more consistent.

I am not original here, but how about adding a track record, like a baseball batting average, for the folks marched onto the TV set?  Don't just track right and wrong calls, but look for closely at the 'on base percentage'. In essence look at the reasoning for the directional calls and the performance - not just the quick stats.  Being right is obviously the goal but when we can't right all of the time investor's need to know who is smart and on point vs. who is just lucky.

P.S. Sorry about the sports analogy but I can't help it since it is Baseball season.

Investors what's next? - 5 Concepts for the future.

From time to time it makes sense to step back, see where we have been and then set our sites on where we are going.  History is nice but it's just that.

1) A V shaped recovery. Just wishful thinking or the speed of the economy in 2009?

2) A democratization of good investment ideas and concepts.  The Internet and social media continue to  level the playing field.

3) Newspapers as we know them are history. Magazines other than conceptual articles are irrelevant.  Information is NOW not yesterday.

4) Blogs are so yesterday - two way conversations will outlast everything else going forward.

5) Independent Research after the global settlement ends will find a different format and a different stage.  Analysts will join main stream social conversations and provide value as they sell their services to a more focused customer.

6) Bonus topic - With so much 'free' information out there it's time to pay a little bit of money for a filter to quickly find what you are looking for or should be looking at. What is your time worth?

These are just some random thoughts and concepts to ponder.  Look forward to the Beta launch of the new Financial Kudos community - its closed to members only and its not free - just more focused and provides more value.  We think about the future everyday and would appreciate your comments and thoughts.

The Banking Stress Test: The Great divide.

Well the results are in and go figure the findings are better then expected.  We discussed this in a blog earlier this week about the worst kept secret.  Now that we know the 'facts' its time to move ahead towards the next big thing which is finding the $75 billion required by the group of banks in need.  The other guys get to pay off the TRAP and begin to pay executives what the market will permit.

As for the capital raising it seems that those plans are already in place.  So we have the group that is free and the group that will raise some capital and become free (albeit over time).

Now let's begin to talk about all of the money coming back to the treasury from the TARP funds.  Does this mean that the economy is in better shape?  Or more importantly does this mean that the previous administrations did a good job?  There are so many implications to these results. It will be very interesting to see how this period plays out in the long term historic view of our economic engine. Let's hope we never find out but it would be interesting to know just accurate the stress test results would be in a dooms day scenario.