3 big opportunities for the real-time financial web (Future of investing)

This post was originally included as part of an ebook that I published alongside the launch of my book, Tradestream, entitled “Tradestreaming and the Future of Investing”. The content was so good I wanted everyone to have access to it.

This one’s from David Jackson, founder and CEO of leading investment community, Seeking Alpha (and my old boss :-))

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With the growth of Twitter, the introduction of updates by Facebook and the inclusion of real-time comments in search results, it’s clear that the real-time Web is having a profound impact on media. Which raises the question: Will the real-time Web transform financial content?

Financial media is naturally real-time because, in financial markets, faster delivery of information can mean real money. So it’s not surprising that a mature industry devoted to getting the most relevant financial news to people in real-time has already developed. Sophisticated real-time products are offered by providers of terminals, news wires, press releases and news organizations. They deliver news instantaneously, filtered according to users’ needs (for example by ticker symbol or industry). Real-time financial news has trickled down to free financial websites and portals, which themselves offer real-time financial news coverage.

But this still leaves three opportunities for real-time updates in finance. The first is technical (chart) commentary for day traders. The most active Twitter users who write about stocks, for example, are day traders. Day trading isn’t Seeking Alpha’s focus (most day traders lose money, and our mission is to help people invest well), so we’re happy to leave short-term, real-time technical analysis to others.

The second opportunity is real-time updates of fundamental analysis. Seeking Alpha’s contributors write in depth analysis of stocks. But their viewpoints can change as companies report quarterly financial results, competitors launch products, or the landscape changes in other ways. We think that short, real-time updates complement in-depth analysis, even for investors with a longer time horizon. We’re finding that an increasing number of our article authors use StockTalk, our “Twitter optimized for
stocks” product.

The third opportunity for the real time Web is mining Tweets and updates for information about companies’ businesses. Which products are gaining traction? Does a company have a PR catastrophe unfolding in real-time? It’s hard to do a good job of surfacing and filtering business information which is impactful enough to move stocks. If you know of anyone who does that, let me know. 🙂

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David Jackson is the founder and CEO of Seeking Alpha. He started his career as a macro-economist at HM Treasury in London and The Bank of Israel, and later moved to Morgan Stanley in New York as a technology research analyst covering the communications equipment sector.

Bloomberg beefing up reflects good things for financial industry

I’ve written about previously (here and here) about Bloomberg’s expansion bloombergand eventual dominance of financial media from news to data and consumer.  The WSJ reports today that indeed, Bloomberg is forecasting a respectable 10% growth rate for 2010 and plans to add an additional 1300 employees.

The revenue gains would come largely from a projected increase of 12,000 subscriptions to the Bloomberg Professional service, which provides data, analytics and news geared to financial-services professionals.

Bloomberg’s revenue for last year was estimated at $6.25 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. Based on that estimate, the new projections would push revenue to nearly $6.9 billion this year.

Growth is good for Bloomberg and ostensibly, the media giant is seeing increased demand for its terminals from institutional investors — a sign that things are picking up on Wall Street and Stamford, CT.

With the recent acquisition of BusinessWeek and content sharing deals that land Bloomberg content on the WaPost and beyond, Bloomberg is turning up the manheat on Dow Jones.

Be afraid, be very afraid.