My Editorial On Blogging Stocks’s Sheldon Liber
Reading blogs have been a great way for me to see different perspectivies. But there are some perspectives that I’d have rather not witnessed. It’s like those television shows that you watch; and then realizing that it has robbed you of precious time that you will never get back.
I don’t think I’ve ever pointed out someone so succintly in the personal finance / investment blogs universe yet, but after reading the numerous rantings of
I bit my tongue when he posted “10 reasons I think Google is going down“. I looked past his uncouth attempts at a witty title such as “How do you spell correction? I spell it: $%#@*&%“. I chuckled at his cravings for attention as he created the Sheldon Index on “Dividends are very sexy — no joke“, that was only equalled by his self-congratulatory follow-up “Sex, jokes, dividends and no surprises“. Sheldon is obviously an intelligent person who is knowledgable in the field of investments, yet reading his posts, I couldn’t help but wonder what the average joe is doing with the information he presents, the way he presents it.
But what has irked me the most is his recent rant about how Google should buy starbucks, now!
It is a post that serves no purpose. How would it make sense to call the Google founders “poor managers” should they not accept a trade of their company for the seven companies he mentioned? 3 stocks of which, Sheldon disclosed as owning and the rest on his watch list. Does his ego know no bounds? Is everybody not investing the Sheldon way wrong?
I’ve been reading Blogging Stocks ever since I discovered it, and it almost feels like they’ve held a contest among their writers to see who can churn out the most irrelevant content. Sheldon Liber would certainly be the current front runner. Blogging Stocks is steadily carving itself a niche, not as an investment blog, but as an investment GOSSIP blog. How many monkeys working simultaneously would be needed to match the content at Blogging Stocks? Because it’s not supposed to be about churning out QUANTITIES of content! But the BloggingStocks writers still keep producing content by the dozens every day. There’s a good reason for this …
Is it the man or the system?
Being a cog in the machinery of the blog network means that you have to keep churning out content, no matter how irrelevant it may be. Following what works means that you should emulate the writing styles of the successful blogs such as Gawker, LifeHacker or Engadget — keeping it short and sweet. Optimally, you should cover lots of topics of interest with as little explanation as necessary, keeping the readers craving for more info will keep them coming back. And don’t forget to be as snarky or as outlandish as your writing personality allows since that’s what the bottom feeders want.
For me, it’s a disturbing trend because that’s the type of information or personalities that the average investor follows. It’s the same formula that has propelled Jim Cramer to the top of investment gurus among average Joes. To borrow from one of my favourite blogger, the very perceptive Chatreuse:
You might wonder. Who am I to critize? Am I bullet proof? I am the first to tell you that if you want to, you will find many things wrong about me. But I don’t feel I’m on the same level as Sheldon nor am I able to show the consistency that he’s displayed. Reading his posts is like encountering that annoying noise as you’re looking for a signal; distracting and disturbing at the same time.
Disclosure: I don’t own Google stocks. I’m just annoyed at how blogging about personal finance can become so spammy and self-serving.
Update: Some people have commented that I am “off my rockers” when I cited “irrelvance”, thinking that I’m defending Google’s valuation. Sheldon himself replied to my comment, which in my books is a very good gesture. I won’t publish his message to me without his permission. I’ll publish my replies here though to “clear the air” about what I’m really defending.
Sheldon,
Thanks for replying. As I’ve noted in my rebuttal post on Investorial.com. I can sense your intelligence and I can understand what you’re trying to drive at. But creating games, playing games, putting your stamp on everything that you write is simply whoring yourself for publicity. It’s in the treatment of your articles that I object. Blogging Stocks is becoming nothing more than a gossip board if this trend keeps going. I compare SeekingAlpha to BloggingStocks and though I’m not a fan of SeekingAlpha either, they are writing superior content than your snarky, holier than thou, “we’re the best and everyone else is trash” attitude at BS.
I honestly do not care about the Google valuation. I don’t watch the stock, I don’t care whether people are right or not about the valuation. When I talk about relevance, I’m speaking about why this piece is even showing on BloggingStocks, not about how relevant it is to Google’s valuation. You may have misjudged my criticism on that.
P.S. I definitely am not a fan of today’s “Google Game“. I’m just surprised not to see the exact phrase “Sheldon’s Google Game” in it with your namesake attached to everything. If you say listening to analysts is an issue, then why should anyone listen to your analysis?
Vince
Hmm… I wonder where
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One Response to “My Editorial On Blogging Stocks’s Sheldon Liber”
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ricemutt Says:
July 10th, 2006 at 11:54 pmI don’t follow his writings, but I perused the article in question. I have to assume he’s trying to being witty and tongue-in-cheek; at least the first half of his article could be interpreted to mean that he thinks GOOG is overvalued and a similar $ could buy several operations with more concrete assets that would be better investments. That’s ok, its his opinion. The second half of the article loses me though. I hope he’s just carrying his attempt at being witty a tad too far. If he’s being serious at all, then I can only agree with your comments, as well as that most of the advice out there in the blogosphere can be pretty bad and self-serving.
