Another update on the new sites

Still waiting on the new blogs. My designer does some nice work, IMO, but he is not always the quickest in terms of turnaround time. Which is too bad, because I was considering him for another project, one with which time will be of the essence, if I decide to pursue it.

Re the new blogs, I mentioned in the last update
that I'd be offering prizes for commenters. I picked up the prizes for the first contest already. First prize will be a $50 gift certificate to McCormick & Schmick's. Second prize will be a pair of movie tickets. Third prize will be a McCormick & Schmick's cookbook¹.

As far as the new subscription-based site, that one's coming along. A static site is up for it now, and the developers are putting the finishing touches on the functionality based on a proprietary algorithm I had commissioned for the site. The logo for this site was done by the same designer who did the Short Screen logo and who is currently working on the new blogs. His final logo for the second subscription-based site was great too, but it got off to a rough start. My initial idea was a piggy bank wearing a medieval knight's suit of armor, but after playing around with that, the logo designer said that didn't scale down. His next stab at the concept was the preliminary sketches above. Those got a chilly reception from my developers (who have done site design work for Showtime, CNN, Mercedes, and some other well-known corporate clients). One of the developers said that Figure 1, which I thought was the best of that bunch², looked like "an S&M pig".

Incidentally -- I mentioned this a few days ago to a reader who contacted me looking for a financial adviser -- the new site will offer individual investors the ability to search for and contact financial advisers who are members of the site (financial advisers will not be able to search for individual investors though). It will also have a link to FINRA's BrokerCheck, so individual investors can check the backgrounds of FAs. Financial Advisers will be able to upload profiles including summaries of their backgrounds, professional designations, a thumbnail photo, and a link to their own site.

¹There may be multiple third prizes, as I have a trunk full of those, since you used to have to buy the cookbook to get the gift certificates at Costco (as part of its current cost-cutting campaign, McCormick & Schmick's no longer includes the cookbooks in that deal).

²Though I thought the Philips head screws the pig had for eyes had an awful connotation: they reminded me of the X's used to denote a dead or passed out comic strip character.

Update on new sites

The two new blogs that will replace this one should be up next week. The plan is to post new investment-related content on one, and everything else on the other. Initially, I was just going to keep everything on one blog, but I got a package deal on the logos, and I think there may be a way to monetize an investment-themed blog down the road. I have a thought on how to do that, but more on that later.

There will be a couple of technical differences on the two new blogs. Both will use Disqus for comments. When I first came across Disqus on Fred Wilson's blog, I didn't get the point of it, but now I think it adds value. For those unfamiliar with Disqus, it allows you to embed a reply to a particular comment; it sends you an automated e-mail when someone responds to one of your comments; and it allows commenters to rate each others' comments. The first of those features makes longer comment threads easier to follow; the second keeps older comment threads alive longer (because commenters know someone will be made aware of their comments) and obviates the need for comment moderation on older posts; and the third of those features will give me a metric by which I can encourage readers to leave more intelligent comments. I'm planning on offering a prize to the commenter who earns the most points commenting on the new blogs at the end of the first month. More on that next week.

The other technical difference will be that the new blogs will be on WordPress. I don't know if that will make a difference to you as readers, but it will mean some new things for me to learn, I suppose. The main reason for the move to WordPress is that there is a greater choice of templates there, and the one my designer picked to semi-customize wasn't available on Blogger.

Finally, the second subscription-based site is currently in development and should launch... maybe by the end of the year, if all goes well. We'll see. More on that later too.

New site

If you're new here, please take a moment to read the post below, which is a message from our sponsor.




A few of you have already seen the demo version of this site, but the live version of it is up now: ShortScreen.com. This site features an automated calculator and a screener based on the Altman models. With the calculator, all you need to do is enter a stock symbol, and the calculator will instantly give you that company's Altman Z-score, or Altman Z"-score, if it's a non-manufacturing company.

The screener runs the Altman Z-Score model on all of the manufacturing stocks in the site's database, and the Altman Z"-Score on all the non-manufacturing stocks. You can pick a minimum share price and then see a list of the 50 most distressed stocks at or above that share price, out of the universe of roughly 3,000 stocks in the site's database. You'll find a couple of the short positions I've mentioned previously on this blog among the 50 most distressed stocks at or above $9 per share.

If, like me, you think it's prudent to include some short positions in your portfolio, perhaps you will agree that a list of stocks that the Altman models predict are headed for bankruptcy might be worth considering as potential candidates for short selling (or buying puts on them, if the particular stocks have options).

The site also has a message board system with a couple of unique features. The first is that, unlike other stock message boards, there will be no bias against skeptical or bearish comments. If you've ever posted one of those on a typical message board, you probably noticed that it quickly got deleted. That makes it tough to find a balanced discussion about any stocks.

The other unique feature is the premium ranking system. Premium members will have the authority to rank comments on a scale from one to five stars. Comments that have an average rank of less than two stars after several votes will be deleted, and the highest-ranked comments will move to the top. Although non-paying registered users and paying premium members will both be able to post on the message boards, the site limits the ranking authority to premium members to discourage anyone from creating multiple accounts in order to manipulate the ranking system (which is pretty common, unfortunately, on Yahoo's message boards).

Premium members will also have the opportunity to become affiliates, and get paid to refer other premium members to the site. When you become an affiliate, you'll get a unique bit of HTML code for an affiliate badge that you can copy and paste onto your site. When you do, it will look like this:



When visitors click on your affiliate badge, they'll go to a special version of the Shortscreen sign-up page where they will get a 5% discount off of the regular membership rate, and your affiliate account will be credited with the referral.

The image above was one of the later preliminary sketches by my logo designer. At that point we were refining the steepness of the hump of the bear's withers. I wanted it to be steep to connote aggression, but when it got too steep it looked too wolf-like.

Vertical Branding: A Predictable Failure

In a post last March ("Applying the Altman Z"-Score Model to a Non-Manufacturing Company"), I mentioned a company called Vertical Branding (at the time it was on the OTC BB; now it's on the Pink Sheets: VBDG.PK). I noted at the time that the Altman Z"-Score model predicted bankruptcy for the firm and that when I had shared this information with the folks on the Investor Hub message board for the stock, I had gotten the Enemy of the People treatment.

A few days after that March post I was indefinitely banned from Investor Hub's VBDG message board, by a moderator who was indicted for securities fraud a few months later. After the close today, Vertical Branding released a "corporate update". Excerpt:

The company's restructuring efforts have failed to achieve expectations or intended results and the company lacks sufficient cash flow to maintain normal operations and meet its current financial obligations. The company's Board is presently reviewing the company's options for reorganization, recapitalization or other methods of deriving value from the company's assets to satisfy the company's liabilities. Because of its working capital shortage, the company has substantially reduced operating expenses by laying off all but three employees and by suspending various operations.

In this case, my getting banned for posting fact-based, bearish comments about Vertical Branding didn't do much good for those who continued to hold the stock. Investors need a site where they can post and read a full range of comments about stocks, including bearish or skeptical comments. Soon they will have one.

Update: The site I alluded to is live now: shortscreen.com. Use of the message boards on that site is free; you just need an e-mail address to sign up here.