Moved from the old forum ...
I'd like to welcome all of you who have agreed to participate in the beta test and development of Stockcentral.com, and describe our thoughts on what we'd like the site to become.
This is a project of ICLUBcentral Inc. For those of you who may not be aware, we are a privately held, profitable, small company that focuses on the development of tools and services for investors and investment clubs. Our "world headquarters" are located in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, and you can learn more at
http://www.iclubcentral.com. We've arranged to have Joe Craig, whom many of you know, work on the development and administration of this site. Though we have various arrangements with BetterInvesting to provide software, this site has nothing to do with them (though they are aware of our efforts). We are a private company, and in many ways we feel that this creates a higher standard for us to create tools that really respond to the needs of our customers and users. If we don't, then we won't be successful.
Now, on to StockCentral.com. First, we're intentionally giving you all access to the site right now, warts and all, because we want to be more transparent and give you a voice in what you think that we should be doing. We're putting together an advisory board, too, who will be active in determining the direction in which we'll be headed. But we're here, listening, and we want your input.
To start, our goal for StockCentral is to create an online tool that gives investors the data and insight that they need to make successful investing decisions. We already make tools that help you with the analysis part of investment decision making, and we're starting to work on the next generation of our software that will incorporate data gathering, research, analysis and insight.
The impetus behind the creation of the StockCentral site is that community interaction -- the kind that comes from discussing potential investments with members of your own investment club or other like-minded individual investors -- can be an important aid in the process of making the buy, sell or hold decisions about stocks that you're considering or already own. The collective wisdom of a group of investors who share a similar approach to investing can be educational, particularly to new investors, but can also provide significant benefits to advanced investors. While there are a number of forums and lists where long-term investors who use the SSG can share information, we think that taking this premise to the next level can have great benefits for participants. That's where StockCentral comes in. And here's our plan, laid out as we intend to be adding features to the web site.
Stage 1:The creation of an online community focused on ticker-based stock discussions. Since we want to be an aid in the investment process when you're researching and evaluating stocks, we are creating specific forums by company. If you're studying Bed, Bath & Beyond, you can just jump to the BBBY forum where you can read and respond to messages from other investors who own or are considering BBBY stock. There's no need to wade through lots of other messages that are irrelevant to your current needs, allowing you to quickly find relevant information that helps in your own decision-making. In the future, we anticipate adding functionality to our stock analysis tools that will bring more of the community interaction to your desktop software, as well, letting you see what other investors are thinking about a stock that you're studying. (From a business standpoint, this is good for StockCentral since our software tools can help promote the web site, but we do think it's a valuable feature for end users, too.) We will also be working on hosting educational seminars that happen right on the site, with featured presenters who are well-known names to our community.
Stage 2:The launch of a company datafeed for use in our stock analysis software. We are in preliminary testing stages of an SSG datafeed that will provide *.SSG and *.SDF datafiles for all US stocks. The data provider that we're using is Hemscott (formerly Core Data, which was formerly Media General Financial Services). Though you may not be aware of the company, they provide data to Yahoo Finance, Hoover's and MSN Money, and more than 1,000 public corporations use their service to create the performance data in their proxy statements. This data is high quality and the datafiles will provide normalized EPS. In addition to the SSG datafiles that you'll be able to download into Toolkit (you'll see the ICLUBcentral datafiles link is already there), we'll also have an SDF file format with
all the data you need for the balance sheet report function.
Stage 3: We'll also provide a web version of the report with complete financial data. This is interesting for us since we can provide some proprietary information on this report that is exclusive to StockCentral and ICLUBcentral. For instance, we can note if a stock is currently on the Complete Roster of Quality Companies, or was recently featured in IAS, or provide the Take Stock Quality Rating, or calculate the Take Stock EPS growth projection for that company, or note if a stock is among the most widely held by our Club Accounting Online clubs. (From a business perspective, this proprietary information is good since it raises awareness of our other products and services, and we will be considering options such as allowing individual back issues sales of the
Investor Advisory Service, but we think it provides a bit more insight into a stock which makes it good for members, too.)
Stage 4:The creation of a consensus analysis/judgment tool. Here's where things start to get interesting. Once we have a critical mass of users who are uploading their SSG files to StockCentral, we'll have a wealth of user-contributed information about particular stocks. Members will be able to see all of the contributed analyses for a company and download them directly into their Toolkit or other programs. We'll also be able to create a "consensus SSG" that embodies all the contributed stock studies for a company, using some smart algorithms that eliminate widely outrageous projections or that, over time, weight more highly the judgment of investors whose past analyses have been more accurate. This is where our objective of bringing together investors will have a really tangible impact. In the future, I can see how we might integrate the SSG-sharing function with ICLUBcentral desktop SSG software even more, to make it really easy to share your SSG files with the site right from your SSG software. Note that in order for this to work, we need SSG file sharing to begin right away, so please start uploading your SSGs now!
Other opportunities: Simultaneously while working on all of the above, we are going to be working with third-party software vendors (web sites, newsletters and other investment information providers) to find ways that work to our mutual benefit as well as to the benefit of StockCentral members. Inasmuch as these third-parties can bring knowledge and insight that will be of great benefit to our members, we're happy to provide a marketing platform for them (just as StockCentral will be an opportunity to increase awareness of ICLUBcentral software and tools). We're not ruling any partner out -- even potential competitors -- as long as they can bring something to the table that will be of interest to our community. This
isn't about advertising. (We'll be announcing our first partner quite soon, and you'll see just how high of a quality standard that we've set.)
Much further down the road: Some of our ideas for the future include adding online stock analysis or Take Stock to the site, as well as screening tools. Perhaps integrating with myiclub.com clubs to give their members more insight into the stocks that they're researching. Adding community functionality in some fashion to our stock analysis tools (such as alerting you if there are new messags for stocks that you're studying when you open the software). There are lots of possibilities!
So, how much will all this cost? We've targeted $33/year (11/16/06: With the launch of StockCentral, the actual price is to be $39/year) as the subscription price for the site. The datafeed itself is worth many times that; but we hope the community functionality is what keeps people involved and engaged. The Complete Roster will be included, as will support for all of your ICLUBcentral software (we'll eventually be eliminating the ICLUB Investing Software Maintenance subscription). Members will get discounts on the products available through our partners, too. But we're going to be offering free one-year subscriptions to StockCentral to the first 10,000 members who sign up before 12/31/06, to help us build momentum and really kick off the site as a place where investors can go to get high quality community interaction.
If you have questions, suggestions, comments or complaints, please let us know!
Doug
President, ICLUBcentral Inc.
Posting from ICLUBcentral World Headquarters in
Harvard Square's historic College House, Cambridge, Mass.