UK 06:41 Sunday, 25 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from ShareProphets). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Are bulletin boards past their sell by date? What is the purpose of them? Could they ever be monitised? A podcast discusses these issues. Now it is off to lunch with Sam Antar
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Comments
Bearfacts
Their is already too much bull promoting on the bulletin boards, I generally like to breeze through them and try and give balanced comments as their is so much unfounded frenzy and high risk gossip.
I think investor comment boards area a good thing but we live in a very paranoid and blame the tmessanger culture, the problem is the current system hasn’t moved with the new media times and needs upgrading.
All the best
David Russell
I agree with you on the fact that a lot of people are pushing rubbish on bulletin boards and feeding them who follow with total false information on twitter. It is like that film Psycho with Norman bates as two people in one that also spell the same. I have a moan sometimes about a loss but in the end its a game and you try and meet or beat the market but I would never abuse anyone on a bulletin board or twitter or ramp or DE-ramp a stock for my own gain. My friends a millionaire and never been on a bulletin board or social media site. He said its his age and why would anyone tell him what they know for free. Anyway Tom great bearcast and Happy New year to you and all that sail with you.:)
Simple Moving Avarice
Stock bulletin boards have a built-in problem. If you own a stock there is no reason to post anything other than bullish comments about it on a public board. In fact if you do want to sell it because you are concerned about its future trend you are even more motivated to talk it up. The reverse applies if you are short.
So the only rational assumption is that everyone making a comment on a BB has a vested interest and is not offering ‘advice’ but in fact are pushing their own position.
There are some who frequent only the few threads for which they hold stocks and go there for confirmation bias. Their profiles show that they only frequent a small number of stocks and they are usually following a get-rich-quick no-thinking-required road to eventual ruin.
But there are others, who frequent a large number of threads, who are clearly using the BB are part of a trading strategy which usually involves buying enough in a low volume stock to move the price and then posting multiple messages to the board to keep that stock’s name in the ‘recent’ frame. Often the messages are trite nonsense like “this is going to rocket” which makes them sound like typical BB morons – but they are far from morons. They know exactly what they are doing.
The worse a stock is the more it seems to be discussed on the BBs. Pretty much the only useful information you can get from a BB these days is volume of posts which might indicate a pump in progress – and there do seem to be a fair few posters who hurtle from one pump to another. Indeed much of the money seems to run round in circles chasing the pumps as they move on to the next stock.
filthy lucre
Interesting to hear that a lover of free speech and liberty opposes bulletin boards, and
would rather that novice investors only read Share Prophets propaganda.
I would rather read the varied views of many, than the musings of a few, dominated
by the loud mouth of ‘the Sheriff’.
Tom Winnifrith
Filthy
You misunderstand on purpose methinks. I am happy for folks to read a wide a variety of info sources as possible, my point was to suggest that BBs appear just to confirm existing long only biases and so offer no added value besides acting as a home to morons like you
T
tomr58
great new year podcast. I wouldn’t knock the BBs quite so much. And remember that when people plagiarize your IP they are also giving you publicity. It is through the Bbs I found this site so it does cut two ways. As an investor you should consider all sources of information and weigh each accordingly and specifically as a user of BBs it is pretty basic stuff to review any particular guru’s track record before you bet the farm.
Tony Prynne
Tom, I think your analysis is spot on. I had a brief flirtation with several BBs 15 or so years ago, but soon pretty much abandoned them as 99% of what is posted is garbage. I get 10 times more value for my time studying a company report than wading through the BB rubbish for a nugget that might be useful. In fact, I get the distinct impression that the majority of BB posters would not know how to set about interpreting a company report. I enjoy your bearcasts because theymake me think. I don’t always agree your point of view, but you are always thought provoking. Keep up the good work and I wish you a very happy 2016.
kennyb
Can you honestly say you’ve never used them and still do?
Bernard O'Sullivan
Tom, I thought this might interest you and couldn’t work out where to post it, So it’s here.
http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1897032/fund-manager-named-george-it-was-time-say-good-bye-investing-china?utm_content=bufferb2025&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Bernard
Cliff Peat
Thanks for the mellow and thoughtful Bearcast.
One day – and maybe soon – there will be a viable business model that combines the best of the bulletin board features with a revenue stream and perhaps we will wonder why “we” didn’t think of it first.
The LSE site has probably the best technical set-up for “share chat” – but it isn’t used by the posters. You can select a “type” of message from a list of Observation, Question, Answer and Research – but the default is “Off topic” and that is hardly ever changed by posters. This means that the filter option is pretty redundant so far as “type” is concerned.
The message “Subject” headings mean that responses to a post can be viewed as a thread. Again, that is largely ignored.
There are some information rich and worthwhile BBs – on ADVFN a stand-out Thread is SRT.L “SRT Revenues-Future Opportunities & Drivers (SRT)”. But this has a Thread owner who has some control over input – and SRT is an exceptional AIM company that communicates the good and bad to its shareholders promptly – encourages them to visit the business – and regards PIs as important.
Then there are the useful Company analyses of Paul Scott and the generally intelligent reader comments on Stockopaedia.
My suspicion is that a modest fee to join a board that had the best of ADVFN/LSE/Stockopaedia etc. would quickly leave just the wheat. As ever, it’s down to identifying the real value propositions that people will pay for.
If you have read Blue Ocean Strategy you might agree that in principle, what Cirque du Soleil did in the Circus industry, might be applied to produce a commercially viable private investors “hub”.
Links to the Shareprophets and other information sources could/should be encouraged even if individual site owners might choose to operate a paid membership “gateway”.
Just been doing a bit of research on numbers and so on – so I’ll leave it there:)
Geoff
A Happy New Year to you and yours. Your comments are always entertaining.
Paul Scott
Hi Tom,
In response to your criticism of me goading morons on advfn bulletin boards, I’ve only ever done that when I’m pissed – as that’s the only time I can be bothered to visit, and endure, the vile people that populate much of those boards (especially on the more popular boards, in disasters like GBO, QPP & AFR).
Some of the quieter boards on advfn are actually fine, with some decent people on them, and you can have a good discussion with people there. Then when the idiots arrive, it’s time to move on.
Note that the boards on Stockopedia are very civilised, as they are monitored, and if anything gets out of hand, one of the administrators intervenes to calm things down. I do think moderation is essential for any bulletin board to be a real success, because it screens out the loonies (they get banned).
Advfn on the other hand want page impressions at all costs, as that drives (or drove, anyway) their ad revenues. So the more acrimony, the more money they make. It has however meant that the quality has gone down & down, and the serious/sensible people go elsewhere.
Regards, Paul.
David Williams
Take the LSE TUNG BB. It consists of a few names all busily congratulating each other. No objective analysis ever enters the conversation and any attempt to inject some gets shouted down or ignored. Although I sometimes worry about TW’s sanity when he’s ranting at full throttle I shudder to think of what things would be like if his voice could not be heard.