StocksAtHome

Discussion

NathanielThurston -- Fri Sep 11 17:49:39 2009

Fridemar, speaking as an ex-professional daytrader, this idea strikes me as impractical. Four questions spring to mind:

1. How will you ensure that the community members do not cheat the community by "trading ahead of their recommendation?"
2. How will the profits of the trading venture be divided among the community members?
3. How will you prevent your competitors from using the insights gained by the community for their own profit?
4. Will the community be larger than the ~150 person limit implied by the connected graph squaring problem? If so, how do you plan to resolve large-scale social issues? If not, how do you plan to compete with existing full-time professional communities of around this size?

These are all real-world problems faced (and solved) by every trading community of which I'm aware. Unless you have solid answers to all three, my judgment is that this idea is a non-starter.

FridemarPache: Nathaniel, guessing right, that this topic would itch you as an ex-professional daytrader, I am thankful that you challenged the venture with some key questions. As I did some earlier (ca about year 2000) private research in this area, I can give you some rough answers to your questions. Writing this offer, I've been thinking to ask you, if you are interested to take all five domains by Google:FreeGainSharing.

My private research consisted in studying literature, subscribing to email newsletters (MotleyFool?,Investopedia, lots of others), watching and taking part in the Yahoo community in the messages forums like e.g.[1] , doing some level 2 daytrading and even writing a simple Forth program, that sensed the volume enhanced charts pixelwise to play them as DataMusic (t=time, f=stockvalues, v=volume) on my midi device.

So we two know, that trading is a real huge field.

1. The Cheating problem can be tackled in different ways:
   1. Fundamental Analysis oriented Longs and Shorts, opponents and proponents give their market sentiments from strong sell to strong buy "recommendations", but have to give fundamental arguments and get themselves rated, which results in dynamic credibility profiles, that are used by the hybrid distributed neuronal net software.
   2. Technical Analysis oriented In StocksAtHome we can define variable look-ahead intervals in front of the actual chart data, where each participant clicks anonymously their (to,t1,f,v) guesses (possibly on a lowcost touchsensible midi keyboard ca 50$), after having heard the sound history before. The fine granulated distribution of the ratings of the guessers are computed anonymously, depending on their performance.
   3. lots of other approaches are possible
2. profits (or losses) are taken individually on real time trading services Google:best+discount+brokers, preferably as Apex clients :-) StocksAtHome in this case only works as a realtime assistive technology. Other (group) solutions are possible, e.g higher integrated forms, that combine brokering and even automated trading are to be considered.
3. user competitors are excluded by a password protected subscription system. The first mover offering this (P2P-based) technology with a massive userbase like Google:SetiAtHome or Youtube could even offer the service for a free subscription.
4. by linearising the model, abstracting from interconnected guesses.

Note: I preferably used indirect links via Google, to accomodate Sunir's wish to minimalize external links

NathanielThurston: Fridemar, your answers are unconvincing to me -- in particular, in your answer to (4) you suggest that by merely "linearizing the model", you can brush aside our collective experience with CommunityMayNotScale. I happen to think that this is a solvable problem - but that it will take a great deal of collaborative effort to do so.

Further, we may be getting ahead of ourselves about the appropriateness of this discussion on Meatball. After all, it is subject to the same objection Sunir had to TrueAuthorCredit: "monetizing contribution changes the perceived value of contribution in harmful ways". I would suggest that if you wish to pursue this concept, that break it up into manageable chunks, each of which has a viable intermediate goal. For example, I would be interested in exploring the possibility of finding convincing solutions to either CommunityMayNotScale or MoneyAndCommunity. Regarding this last, I feel the need to "jump up and down to make myself heard" -- it is grossly insufficient to make an argument that convinces you, or even one that convinces me. Rather, we must endeavor to make an argument that is convincing to the entire community, in the form of a polished DocumentMode which has won the consensus (not just the apathetic tolerance) of the entire community.

FridemarPache: Nathaniel, agreed with you and Sunir, that this page calls for document mode in the end, based on the consensus of the community. What we are doing here is a kind of BuildTalk, which is indispensable, whenever a barn is built. I.e. whenever a piece of the building is to be lift, too big for one person, there is the need to communicate to allow the effects of joined forces. Before I read your last dialogue unit, I had already written the following part, which gives another argument to enhance the value for the readers:

Nathaniel, as a highly creative professional, I guess, you know the "Tell me more about it, so that we can evaluate it" trap in the negotiation with a possible employer (pe), where the pe always shows scepticism to get more and more out of the applicant. After a long enough phase of negotiation, the potential employer says: "We have all done this before. Our conversation is under NDA". So the prudent applicant is forced to put a lot of resources (if available) and unproductive work into securing his/her innovation claims into patents or similar protection mechanisms. Very often inventors may prefer to bury their inventions instead of letting their creativity be disturbed by such side effects. Do you know the famous Russian Mathematician who rejects an enormous sum as award for having solved a substantial problem, although he lives under humble conditions .. to be untroubled by extraneous stress. In contrast to "normal business patterns" (or even not) CreativeCommons WikiNomics models such as e.g. SocialDomaining allow the inventors to become investors, investors with money, that they don't have. This is especially a great opportunity for creative people in developing countries. In our case of StocksAtHome, I could imagine to "pay" the developers with the money, earned by selling the domains to risk venture capital investors (where the money is). If a right holder of StocksAtHome offers you to negotiate for a FreeGainSharing?, you and the offerer are not supposed to do the development part of the software, but to do the development part of the awareness for its potential value. We are only a small part in the value chain. As all the money transactions involved are made transparent to the public, no inappropriate exploitation of the community resources takes places. On the contrary, in principle the whole process produces first class information to the readers, information that is otherwise closed away from the public.

NathanielThurston -- Sat Sep 12 19:39:19 2009

Fridemar, I haven't met [Perelman], though of course I am familiar with his situation -- the prize he refused was the same prize my father accepted long ago; and he proved my father's geometrization conjecture.

Regarding further work on this page, I will repeat myself: I feel that there is much work to be done on supporting concepts before it would be appropriate to spend any more time on this one.

FridemarPache: Nathaniel, if I understand you right, you are disinclined to spend any more time on supporting the concept of StocksAtHome from the developer view. D'accord. As I suppose, that you might have good business connections from your (awarded) professional developer work in this context, your last answer doesn't exclude to me the possibility of FreeGainSharing?. No further response will be understood as well in a good sense, AssumingGoodFaith.