Hi everyone, I have a three questions for active swing traders regarding an idea I had a few months ago. I wanted to create a voting platform for swing trade stock picks. The platform would list every Nasdaq stock chart, and the stocks with the highest votes would be reordered daily, reflecting the community sentiment for the current trading day. The goal is to leverage the power of collective wisdom! So, my questions are as follows: Would you find such a platform useful? What feature ideas should the platform have? As the quality of stock rankings improves with more voters, I'm thinking about how to spread the word. Any ideas are welcome! Thank you for your input!
So my first recommendation is, research what's out there already, as the idea isn't new. My primary issue with similar platforms I've seen is, what does the user gain? If you have actually experienced traders/investors on it, that's potentially a treasure trove of data. At the very least, the users should have access to that... or otherwise be compensated for it. A key aspect would probably be to identify outperforming users and weigh their suggestions higher (perhaps exclusively). Tying back to the previous point then, those are really most of the value added on the platform. Call me a skeptic but I guess it's probably not possible to adequately compensate them. Example: In Sweden we have a platform called Shareville, in which users voluntarily share their portfolios. The platform is owned by a broker and the portfolios are real (but require an account with that broker to see them). In this case, you can argue that the users help each other out, but it's pretty hard to manually search around for any outperformance. And again, the broker gets much more from it than the users do.
I totally hear you, and with the platform where users voluntarily share their portfolios, I guess there is not adequate compensation for them. However, my idea is slightly different in that I am looking at the classic phenomenon where crowds' averaged guesses are more accurate than individuals. Take a look at my setup below (this is simple layout), see the highest voted stock will show the percentage of overall votes attained. This will be updated in real time. Clicking on a chart will then populate the comments for that stock on the right hand side. I will certainly take your very good advice about identifying outperforming users and weigh their suggestions higher; there are a number of ways I can do this and I agree it is important. The platform should also be free to use, certainly eventually it should remain a freemium model with upgrade options, and invite only, to try and maintain high quality of trader.
My main concern would be about signal–noise. How/why would this give me an edge? And if it's public + free, won't that edge just get exploited away by others? If there's an edge, you want to keep it private somehow. It might be a good way to source trade ideas from the community, but how much better would it be than some basic filters that I can apply on my own?
Great questions. Using crowdsourced data in stock trading could give traders a clear edge in two significant ways: Enhanced Accuracy through Crowdsourcing: Averaged crowd guesses are more accurate than individual assessments. By tapping into collective wisdom, traders can minimize biases and identify better stock setups. Opportunity Discovery: The leaderboard acts as a filter, presenting a wide range of setups that traders couldn't physically review daily. Any edge gained will not be easily exploited away. Different traders focus on different stocks, entering and exiting at various times, which prevents any collective impact. Remember, the leaderboard reorders daily so people will be in and out at random times relative to one another. For instance, while you may prefer to trade the stock ranked number 3 on the leaderboard due to its suitability for your trading style (e.g., 'Bull Flag'), others may be trading the stock ranked number 1 or other setups that align with their own criteria. Moreover, users can vote up a stock and provide their reasoning, such as identifying a 'Bull Flag' pattern. As a result, traders can filter the leaderboard and focus on setups that meet their personal criteria. All that aside, with a highly liquid market like the Nasdaq (with $250 billion daily trade volume), individual and community trades have minimal influence. Maybe if there were 1 million people all going long the same stock it may move the needle, but the platform I am creating is geared more towards filtering through various stock picks curated by the crowd, rather than trying to find one stock pick. You have made me think though, rather than have a single 'Top 100' voted stocks for example, I could have a 'Top 50 Bull Flags', 'Top 50 Triple Bottoms' .. and so on.