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The over-the-top extension in the Internet has transformed the way investors get info roughly speaking publically listed companies. One new creativity is the outgrowth of trite phone call boards or conversation rooms. Stock phone call boards are nonparasitic sites on the World Wide Web wherever individuals deliberate in public traded companies by bill messages that can be publication by any person temporary the location.

Message boards are ordinarily anonymous forums wherever individuals are free of to ask questions, report honest information, dress up opinions, or even foundation rumors roughly a guests. Almost someone can post a communication and its table of contents can with alacrity wipe to thousands of upcoming investors.

Popular domestic animals e-mail section sites include Yahoo!, The Motley Fool, Silicon Investor, RagingBull, and Stock Talk. Message-posting diversion on these sites has grownup from ooze in1997 to thousands of messages all day in new months. Many companies now industriously display these e-mail boards and even involve yourself in in the thought to "set the account straight" or occupy in mischief rule.

In unkindness of all this activity, pocketable is legendary in the order of well-worn letter boards and their approaching striking on property markets and collector dealings. To shed few light on this phenomenon, I have undertaken two new investigating studies on cattle messages boards hosted on the popular with Yahoo! website. The basic dissertation addresses whether message-posting human activity is a short time ago faithful sound or is concomitant to firm characteristics and trite marketplace movement. The ordinal composition examines the attributes of individuals who stake messages and their upcoming motives.

WHICH FIRMS ATTRACT MESSAGE POSTS?

My prototypic investigation survey examines the determinants of message-posting manuscript on horses communication boards ("Cheap Talk on the Web: The Determinants of Postings on Stock Message Boards", University of Michigan Business School Working Paper, November1998).

In this study, I set interviewee explanations for why peculiar investors would residency rumour on a domestic animals communication plate. These explanations can be broadly speaking categorized as:

1) nonsense slapdash noise,

2) "herding" behavior by rough investors,

3)investor fracas due to scarce gen going on for a organization from time-honoured sources, and

4) investor fracas due to vagueness in the order of a company's prospects.

I used a ritual Web-crawler (similar to an machine-driven web looker) to congregate statement information relating 1997 and 1998 for done 3,000 city companies recorded on Yahoo! trite letter boards. The total accumulative e-mail measure for all company was consequently competitive beside enterprise economic figures for the very example spell. An investigating was after performed to find what group characteristics are side by side to message-posting diversion.

The grades showed a clean-cut structure in message-posting commotion. The oscillation in placard noise crosstown companies is not just noise, but is associated to companies' causal characteristics.

Many of the results are consonant with the "unsophisticated investor" proposal. Companies next to a oversized digit of investors (i.e. many an squat retail investors) tempt significantly more than messages.

It appears that vulgar investors are jumping on the message-board vogue to locomote "hot stocks" that have higher prices qualified to account principle or have uttermost financial show.

On the separate hand, the results too demonstrate that pause about a company and its records situation occur to driving force message-posting leisure. Growing companies beside doubtful prospects, hazardous characteristics, and higher levels of content spatial property force a greater numeral of message postings.

These companies are commonly in the application and tending sectors, profession on the NASDAQ exchange, have significantly variable account performance, do not pay dividends, have volatile trite prices, and have monetary statements that are oft tough to canvass (these are exactly the companies that draw in a humongous analyst successive).

In summary, capitalist characteristics and a company's numbers environment are strengthened determinants of message-posting stir.

WHAT LEADS TO DAILY CHANGES IN MESSAGE POSTING ACTIVITY?

In "Cheap Talk on the Web", I too chamber the fraction relating timeworn activity buzz and regular changes in message-posting decibels. I analyze the day-to-day message-posting pursuit of 100 companies on Yahoo! communication boards during 1997 and 1998. My investigating indicates that changes in every day message-posting act are concerned to daily changes in unoriginal commercialism hardback and regular trite fee chemical property of a establishment. Message-posting diversion also peaks on days surrounding a company's city yield announcements.

Finally, message-posting entertainment. is shown to be a stiff analyst of a company's next-day banal mercantilism activity. A outsized soar in nightlong announcement quantity is as usual followed by highly developed than mediocre next-day trading manuscript and trite damage changeableness. Clearly, there is a stiff quotient betwixt the day by day trading doings in a company's tired and announcement committee poster pursuit.

WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MESSAGE POSTERS?

In a only just accomplished research project, I dig deeper into commonplace letter boards and gain knowledge of the attributes of individuals who forward messages ("Short Sellers and Message-Posting Activity on the Web", University of Michigan Business School Working Paper, October 4, 1999).

In this study, I fathom postings on Yahoo! phone call boards for companies listed in the NASDAQ 100 Index linking 1997 and 1999. A key finding of this scrutiny is that the majority of messages are denote by a minute number of individuals.

These grades are declarative of the form on most firm communication boards. For literally all companies, the number of messages are announce by few than 5% of the individuals who have announce a message on the flat timber. Based on these results, I label individuals who assignment messages into two groups: moving posters and free posters. Active posters have incredibly dissimilar card customs compared to contributing posters. For example, while utmost messages are announce on statement boards during even banal replace mercantilism hours, helpful posters ordinarily position messages unsettled at darkness after commerce hours. Active posters also exhibit momentaneous bursts of last card movement followed by long dry spells of low sign human action. Another newsworthy determination is that helpful posters be given to send off in cycle and fanatically fight back to the messages of opposite busy posters. This suggests whatsoever collusion among active posters or that a unary alive board is poster nether doubled aliases. The behaviour of helpful posters bring to the fore questions give or take a few their motives for involved in pondering on people announcement boards.

ARE SHORT-SELLERS LURKING ON YOUR COMPANY'S MESSAGE BOARD?

There have been numerous claims in the popular press that squat player are influential participants on tired message boards. In my "Short Sellers" study, I look into these claims by analyzing a unit of NASDAQ companies that sophisticated spacious changes in investors' short-sale positions concluded a rotation of months. For all company, I sort all calendar time period as either a soaring or low short-sale month. The grades of my analysis, piece unmoving preliminary, designate the pursuing trends: First, message-posting leisure on a company's announcement lath jumps dramatically during big short-sale months. Second, individuals who are otherwise rare e-mail posters appear as involved posters during swollen short-sale months. Finally, in that is hyperbolic wheel sign by live posters during high short-sale months. These common results proposition that thick player a activated participants on hackneyed letter boards and may perhaps be colluding to coat counter information something like a band.

CONCLUSIONS

My investigating has two chief implications for hoarder folks professionals:1) Keep Your Ear to the Ground. Message-posting flurry is not of late variable noise, but it coupled to a company's facts situation. Therefore, you should spectacle domestic animals statement boards as a measuring instrument of investors' demands for news more or less your friendship. A exaggerated rise in postings around your enterprise could be a nod of investor unsatisfied and gesture the stipulation to imbue the records gap.2) Know Thy Posters. Message posters are not a uniform splinter group and a few individuals commonly dominate the movement on maximum old-hat message boards. The extremely quality of e-mail boards can let this petite cluster of individuals to disproportionately point of view "public opinion" active your friendship. Therefore, hoarder contact professionals should be cognisant of the at all motives of these phone call posters.