Socializing the Bull & the Bear

For those who are not familiar, the terms bull market and bear market describe upward and downward financial market trends, respectively, and can be used to describe either the financial market as a whole or specific sectors and securities.

Lately people are trying to make these two financial market enemies come more close and socialize through networks. A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called “nodes”, which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

Today I read a tweet on my timeline that eTrade is launching its social platform. Well eTrade are losers for 3 reasons, first because it is not a coincidence that 2 days ago i wrote this blog post about their bad customer service and how they pushed me and another 1,200 clients from their Dubai office, to shut down or transfer our accounts, second because it took them so long to realize that stock traders can also network to share trading ideas, charts settings and technical analysis, third because already some other players took the stocks social networking to another level.

Below is a list of few stocks social networking sites that can bring more trading value mainly to beginner and intermediate traders. I am sure there are many others out there, so feel free to comment about them.

StockTwits® is an open, community-powered idea and information service for investments. Users can eavesdrop on traders and investors, or contribute to the conversation and build their reputation as savvy market wizards. The service takes financial related data and structures it by stock, user, reputation, etc.

Keep track of like-minded traders, view their trades and emulate their strategies with myTRADE, see real trades of other myTRADE users as they share them.
myTRADE, Inc. and TD Ameritrade are separate but affiliated companies.

SocialPicks is a community for stock market investors to share investment ideas, exchange market research, and track peers’ investment performance. SocialPicks also tracks picks by gurus (e.g. Warren Buffett & Jim Cramer), professional analysts, and various financial bloggers so you can see how well you perform against them.

BullsOnWallStreet is an interactive stock website designed by active traders. Whether you have experience trading stocks or none at all we are here for you. If you’ve never bought or sold a stock before and you want to learn some of the tricks of the trade from some experienced people try us out! We offer a live trading floor where you can watch and follow our trades. We also offer mentoring, active daily stock picks, and our pro members receive significant benefits that you won’t find anywhere else.

Founded in 1993 in Alexandria, VA., by brothers David and Tom Gardner, The Motley Fool is a multimedia financial-services company dedicated to building the world’s greatest investment community. Reaching millions of people each month through its website, books, newspaper column, television appearances, and subscription newsletter services, The Motley Fool champions shareholder values and advocates tirelessly for the individual investor.

TheLion.com is a growing financial web 3.0 community site for active traders and investors. We offer a highly-integrated community for all stock due diligence process. Users are empowered to share and educate profitable investment ideas across the site medium 24/7. TheLion.com is all about web 3.0 – the process of achieving one’s own financial goals and satisfaction in life.

Stockpickr, a wholly owned subsidiary of TheStreet.com, was named one of Time.com’s 50 best Web sites in 2007 and was one of the first sites to combine social networking with stock investment ideas. Stockpickr’s Stock Idea Network provides members with windows into the stock picks of other community members as well as professional investors, sparking discussion via idea-sharing forums and products.

Most investing websites force people to think in the language of ticker symbols. Wikinvest lets you start with concepts, which can be things like themes, ideas, trends, products, and industries. Wikinvest has created an intuitive way to browse investing content by concept articles, which then explain which companies are impacted and why.

Investimonials.com is a place to discover the best financial products…and to weed out the worst. With thousands of financial products and talking heads out there, how are you to know what products are worth using? Discover products you never knew about and share your input on the products you’ve used in the past.

Profit.ly was created by Timothy Sykes & Michael Mosseri to discover the most profitable investors and traders while weeding out the worst. Simple goal but huge task as the online financial world is as transparent as Bernie Madoff’s hedge fund days.

One last service I would like to mention and is not a stock social networking but related to stocks and traders is Tringz, a free, real-time stock market browser for all traders out there using Twitter from their mobile smartphones (all platforms and operating systems).
Users can read comments and tweets from traders and investors and can also benefit from Tringz to confess about their daily trading feelings or opinions about stocks on their portfolios.
Tringz can also be used as a regular twitter mobile client.