My Stream’s Collective Voice

As StockTwits grows, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the collective voice of my stream, and how I interpret it.  I’ve seen the development of the stream over the past two years and some interesting things have taken place.

When I talk about the stream, I mean my friends stream.  I still believe watching the all stream provides little benefit to anyone, it’s just too much raw information without any context.  Every day we think about how to filter and curate that information so that your aren’t drinking straight out of a fire hose.  The individual ticker streams are a great way to filter, but really, StockTwits is about finding the 100-150 people you trust to give you good information on the stocks you follow, and following them with your friends stream.  That’s really what it comes down to.  I use the ticker streams a lot, but I don’t sit on any of them all day like I do my friends stream.

The evolution of my friends stream has been quite amazing.  I remember less than a year ago when there were only a hand full of people I trusted that were trading the same type of setups I look at on a regular basis.  Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of great ideas coming from my stream at that point, but I used it in a very different way than I do today, here’s why.

I would say about three months ago my friends stream hit a tipping point.  And before I tell you what that means, understand that I follow a similar number of people today that I followed 3-6-9 months ago, they are just different people.  The tipping point was in collective voice.  In essence I went from seeing individuals post good ideas that I was listening to, not necessarily acting on but definitely listening to, to seeing multiple individuals in my stream post the same or similar ideas within a short period of time, over and over again.

Why is this significant?  Listening to an individual give a specific setup may give you an idea, but seeing several people in your stream that you trust, who trade a similar strategy, and similar stocks, all post the same idea, independent of each other, now that’s big.  The point here is that if I start to see several of these people posting the same or similar setups, on the same stock, or within the same industry, it gives me conviction.  Before they were just ideas to look at, now it’s a little different.

My stream’s collective voice gives me confidence, it gives me more conviction in my own ideas.  I love seeing multiple traders I trust post the same idea, even if they are piggybacking on each other.  I love the fact that my stream has hit a critical mass and believe it or not, sometimes my stream feels like a team game.  Yea that may sound cheesy, but if we think about StockTwits recreating the atmosphere of a trading desk, it makes a good deal of sense.  I don’t care where on my stream the ideas come from, the people I follow all have good eyes for the market, and I’ve chosen many of them because they trade a similar style to me.

Not only that, but the people who follow me now understand my style so well, that they actually hit me with ideas.  I don’t follow many of these people, it would overload my friends stream, but they are so awesome that they go out of their way to directly share ideas with me, that’s amazing.

All in all I think my friends stream has hit a critical mass, for me at least.

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