If you are an investor who strives to improve your craft, then you might have surrounded yourself with a community specifically for the purpose of discussion and learning. (You are reading BloggingStocks, aren't you?) And that's what joining BloggingStocks has meant to me. Though at times, I don't know how I fit into the group. My self-deprecating personality tells me that I don't post enough, that I've talked about a limited number of companies thus far. If you called me the Black Sheep of the "family," you wouldn't be too far off!My insecurities were magnified when our very own Sarah Gilbert (god bless her hard work) announced that she is putting the finishing touches on integrating Blogging Stocks categories into the next AOL Money & Finance update. Definitely exciting news! But when I looked at the list of companies that will be having their own category/sub-domain on BloggingStocks, I realized how distant my own stock watch-list was from the most commonly followed stocks out there!
To visit the categories for these stocks, just take their ticker symbol and add it to the BloggingStocks domain. (Example: the category for 3M can be found at http://mmm.bloggingstocks.com). I will explain why I'm the black sheep after the jump!
Here is a list of the companies that will soon be getting their own Blogging Stocks categories:
3M, Abbott Lab, Adobe, AMD, Aetna, AFLAC, Alcoa, Allergan, Allstate, ALLTEL, Altria, Amgen, AmSouth Bancorp, Anheuser-Busch, Applied Materials, Archer-Daniels-Midland, AT&T, AutoNation, AutoZone, Avaya, Avon, Basuch & Lomb, Bed Bath & Beyond, BellSouth, Best Buy, Black & Decker, Blockbuster, Boeing, Boston Scientific, Brinker Intl, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Campbell Soup, Caremark Rx, Carnival Corp, Caterpillar, CBS, Centex, Charles Schwab, Chicago Merc. Exchange, Chipotle, Ciena, CIGNA, Circuit City, Clear Channel, Clorox, Coach, Colgate-Palmolive, Comcast, Comverse, ConAgra Foods, ConocoPhilips, Costco, Countrywide Financial, CVS, D.R. Horton, Darden Restaurants, Diaego plc., Dominio's Pizza, Estee Lauder, Expedia, Family Dollar Stores, Federal Natl. Mortgage, Federated Dept. STores, FedEx, Fisher Scientific Intl, Fortune Brands, Gannett, Gap Inc., General Mills, Goldman Sachs, H&R Block, Halliburton, Hansen Natural, Harrah's Entertainment, Hershey Co, InteraActiveCorp, IBM, Intl. Flavors, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg Co., Krispy Kreme, Kroger Co, LookSmart Ltd, MasterCard Inc., Medicis pharmaceutical, Merrill Lynch, Monster Worldwide, Morgan Stanley, Netflix, New York Times, Newell Rubbermaid, Nokia, NYSE Group, J.C. Penney, Research In Motion, Revlon, Safeway, Sara Lee, Sears, Sony, Sprint Nextel, Tiffany & Co., Toyota, Tribune Co., Viacom, Walgreen, Walt Disney, Whole Foods Market, Yum Brands.
And let's not forget the stocks that have already made the quotes section on the top-right corner of BloggingStocks! After I examined the complete list and compared to my personal watch list of 46 stocks, there were only 6 common ticker symbols, making it a less than 14% correlation. I have to admit that Blogging Stocks is covering a pretty comprehensive list, so the conclusion has to be ... WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?
Maybe you've been waiting for an excuse to beat me down further, so here's your chance to label me an outcast. But I have to come to grips that I am the Black Sheep of the BloggingStocks family and find my niche. After all, a black sheep will be tremendously useful if you were herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain in the white of winter, right?
It's also my convenient excuse for not posting more often because I took Warren Buffett's advice to ignore as much as possible the market's noise literally! In this day and age where Jim Cramer yells buy/sell and the herd follows, it would be nice to know if BloggingStocks readers out there are able to find compelling investment stories far away from the limelight and not spoken on the lips of every investor, analyst and blogger out there. Maybe you can share with us your Black Sheep pick!
Other interesting tidbits - where are Pfizer and Merck? The list is of course a work in progress, but those two names jumped out at me as being missing especially with the many pharmaceutical names present in the list.
Vince Chan is an InvestorGeek, and editorializes about investment / financial media at Investorial.com.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-14-2006 @ 1:37PM
sarah gilbert said...
We're happy to have you as Black Sheep among us, Vince (although I'm thinking a few of your compatriots would raise their hands as fellow Black Sheep :). As for Pfizer, it's here (it's just been here all along, so I didn't include it on the list), and Merck is a good call. I can explain... I started with the beginning of the alphabet...
New list will be forthcoming this week!
11-14-2006 @ 11:19PM
Marty Moe said...
Hear Hear!! We love having you in the Bloggingstocks family; the whole community will benefit from your insightful perspective. Baa Baa
11-14-2006 @ 11:44PM
Mr. noitall said...
There has been a huge increase in the number of articles posted on BloggingStocks during the last month or so. (Could this be an indication that we are nearing a market top? lol). I don't have time to read them all. I always check to see what you have to say Vince. Quality is better than quantity. The Canadian income trusts story was one of your bests. Thanks for the extra information you provided for us all on that subject.
11-15-2006 @ 1:46AM
Vince Chan said...
Thanks for the kind thoughts! I hope to keep writing more posts when inspiration hits.
Hmm.. somebody should definitely examine if there's any correlation between financial blogging and market performance, though I wouldn't know where to begin on that. :)