It's not negative; it's an astute observation, and I thank you! :) I suppose some might fully have the intention to promote stocks they are interested in, but all submissions are subject to community voting so theoretically only opportunities of true merit should rise (I have plans to defend against gaming the system). Successful traders sharing tips actually makes sense if they've already bought into a position, because they are essentially promoting that position. Many "expert" analysts get paid to give opinions, and I think everyone should have this opportunity.
It's not so much about being better, but rather in addition to something like CAPS, because I think CAPS has the right idea and both services could shed light on trade opportunities. The model for CAPS is highly ranked/successful members sharing trade ideas and I think that's valuable. One difference, however, is that I plan to pay any members with significant audiences visiting their profile blog on an ad revenue sharing program. This will hopefully draw participation from many top traders to the site.
I like StockTwits, but the information seems to be all over the place. My goal was to make opportunities easier to find, as well a bit of enhanced research by crowdsourcing.
That's a fair point. The user is voting for both the stock and the reasoning. The idea is that people with the best insights will rise highest. It's certainly a new concept which may evolve as time goes by. There will also probably be a duplicate checker to alert the submitter.
Karma is only awarded from other members in discussion areas. Additionally, a virtual trading system is in the works to accurately track member performance. The trades are entered on the site, and compared to the actual market so there would be no fake scores.
Yes, I know what you mean and I'll continue to look at ways to integrate buzz about a stock. However, my rather ambitious goal would be to have the site almost create news, similar to the Digg effect, so that top voted items on the home page might one day garner so much attention the stock might rise by default.
The incentive for submitting ideas is to get other perspectives and information to take into consideration when making a decision. I often have a gut feel about a certain stock direction, but would like to hear how others feel about it. That's an interesting idea for the karma. Currently, like HN it's based on upvotes from others, except there is no karma awarded just for submissions. Great idea about posting the current stock price next to the titles. I'll look into it. Thanks!
The email update should work now if you log out, then back in again. That's a great idea about memorizing other things. Thanks, I'll see how that feature might integrate, while not making things confusing.
I can't answer your question until you answer one yourself: are you okay working for someone else until you retire? If that's fine then I think you just need to find a company which fits you better - one that gives you decent salary, hours, other perks etc. I do think you are being taken advantage of as an engineer in this field for such a meager work to compensation ratio. I wouldn't work that hard unless it was either for myself, or to amass enough funds to start something for myself.