Tuesday, April 10, 2012

I've Been Exposed!

A reader has me figured out! One person left the following comment on one of my articles:

"Your writing template(s) are just pathetic:

The Stock Template
1. Pick any company.
2. Describe its operations.
3. Discuss a few very basic points about the business and industry.
4. Tell the reader that, only he can decide whether the stock is cheap or not.

The Book Template
1. Pick any book on investing.
2. Provide a short summary of the first chapter.
3. Create another post.
4.Provide a short summary of the second chapter. And so on and so forth."


The comment is quite correct...but what else am I supposed to do? I'm not going to provide detailed, time-consuming research reports for free, and the book summaries are as much for me as they are for you.

That's not to say the articles couldn't be better, though. Any suggestions on how to improve the aforementioned process and reduce this blog's "pathetic-ness" level?

Thanks to Juan and Paul for coming to my defence.

14 comments:

Frank said...

I can't speak for others, but it would be a lot less pathetic if you paid us for our time spent reading your blog.

Now, at first this may seem ridiculous, but take a moment to consider the points.

First, think about all the time it takes us to read it, and then log into our brokerage accounts so that we can make the trades. That is time we could have spent yelling at other people who give us free stuff.

Second, don't forget all the effort your readers put into sniping when you make tiny mistakes and bitching when you say something contrary to our positions. That takes a lot of commitment, and it really shouldn't go unnoticed.

Third, do you realize the opportunity cost of your content? I could be on Buzzfeed learning about Lindsay Lohan's latest tattoo. Instead, here I am reading your concise, clear analysis that has consistently made me money.

On a more serious note, after a bit of searching I found your commentator's template for web use:
1. Find high quality, free content
2. Bitch until the provider of such content calls it quits
3. Repeat.

Your only response to him should be GYOFB. Does he not realize that he doesn't have to go to your site?

Salsero said...

Your articles are great. Don't change anything!!

Anonymous said...

I'd love to see more follow up articles on some of the stocks you have already mentioned!

Anonymous said...

one of my favorite blogs on the net for sure, and I read A LOT of blogs as I manage money professionally. you could always put more slam-dunk double and triple baggers ideas on here :) but seriously, this is a GREAT place for idea generation, ideas for improvement..... maybe the occasional really in depth idea post would be interesting? other than that nothing i can think of though so please keep up the good work and shake off the haters!

rathaan said...

hey saj,
just goes to prove that the net is indeed a 'democracy' if you know what i mean . Been getting my daily dose of sanity here since December'09 and proud of it!
nice to see (apart from that paid posting thing ,which i guess is a grey area and YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO DO SO) it remains the way it is.i dont think an amateur investor needs to go much further than this site to get the requisite common sense,humor and encouragement that a 'wannabe' like me needs.

anyways now that you know that frankie still loves you WOULD YOU PLEASE MIND AND RESTART THAT CHAT FEATURE(trust it ought add a few more digits to the 2125 subscribers that we currently see,maybe even an fb community ON FB,THINK ABOUT IT)...lol

hope the rising stock market will help you start your own fund...long live mr.bernanke!
p.s.dude keep up the good work and for god's sake please dont give readers of questionable iq a whole article..thats just what such children want as i ve learnt the hard way..galactus would never have bothered
@frank-wot's gyfob?

buff_butler said...

Oh no! Busted!

You do great work Saj. My RSS reader shows my most diligently checked blogs on the splash screen when I login and you're #1. More importantly there are tidbits of knowledge in this and other favorite blogs that you don't gain from school, but instead from experience. The end result being I can:

1. Pick a company
2. Describe its operations
3. Notice points about the business and industry
4. Decide whether the stock is cheap or not

I've never understood people heckling smaller blogs. Like, an analogy would be going to a video store and telling the clerk you don't like Terminator. Renting it and then calling the video store saying you didn't like it. If you don't like the blog don't read it. We promise not to speak ill of your Amazon, Sirius Radio and Facebook.

Anonymous said...

Prefer those bloggers that just cut and paste articles from other sources.

There is too much original quality content out there - we don't need more. What we need are links.

Saj Karsan said...

Thanks guys.

Hi Rayhaan, I think it stands for "Get Your Own Effin' Blog" (so I guess it's a typo, as it should read GYOEB ;)

Paul said...

You're my boy, saj! You're my boy!

Anonymous said...

Saj

I do like your site and I agree if this guy doesn't like it, he should just no tune in, as "frank" suggested.

But I do wonder, the performance statistics you tend to give at the end of each qtr tend to be rather vague in my opinion, and I am not sure why ?

I also wondered, "frank" mentioned that he has always made money following your blog ? But I was under the impression that your fund has been a fairly consistent underperformed relative to the market since its inception, is that not correct ?

Simple curiosity following this thread led me to try and find the official numbers but I could only piece together random posts you made at various times re your actuall performance in the fund, and these never showed any cumulative stats ?

I admire the cheerleading and support you have engendered from some friends but I also am curious as to the merits of the praise beyond you being a good guy, which you clearly seem to be

Of course you are under no obligation to publish your results if your fund is not a piblice vehicle but I think if you do publish random results it would help to provide real context so readers can evaluate things on the whole, and also Id be curious re the era city of "frank" comment

I stress a the end here that I do love your blog and enjoy it, if I didn't, surely I would just not tune in, as "franks" suggests

Thanks Saj

Keep fighting the good fight

Anonymous said...

Please don't change a thing. I'm an engineer, not an investor, but thanks to your blog I make a very good return on my stock investments. I have also learned a great deal about value investing in general.

Saj Karsan said...

Hi Anon#4,

There are a couple of assertions you made and conclusions you drew that I think are erroneous.

First, the posts with KVF's results are not randomly published; they have all occurred in the week following the end of the quarter, and are all available here.

I'm not sure why you think the results are vague, as each report contains the fund's equity, gains, taxes, and currency movements. You are right that I don't calculate performance since inception, but that is because the fund has been in existence for two years and change. If you are a value investor, you understand that while performance can be measured in minutes, hours, days, months or years, risk cannot be, and therefore it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to draw conclusions from short time periods.

Having said that, if you added back taxes the fund has paid and assumed a CAD/USD as it was at the fund's inception, I think you would find the fund has outperformed the S&P 500. But like I said, this tells you very little about the risk/reward of the fund because of the short time period.

Finally, whether or not the fund has made money has no bearing on whether you (or frank or anybody else) make money as a result of using this site. You get to pick and choose what you believe to be the best ideas depicted on this site, and so there's no reason your performance can't be extraordinary even if my fund's returns were to be horrible.

optionsnut said...

Your blog provides very good articles on a wide range of topics and books.

I wouldn't change a thing. Please keep it up! I am happy to read your free content which i find more useful than many pay sources.

Your content is well worth the soon to be gone pennies that i don't pay.

Would consider your "fee based" content if it were ever to materialize.

Ignore the haters!

D

Luay Rahil said...

Keep the hard work, I love your blog, and I enjoy reading it every morning before I Leave my house.