Carl Icahn, The Stock Markets and The Social Web...Never Fast Enough...and The Winners and Losers

First a reminder…The Markets are Rigged!

It is impossible to fix such a complex structure. You can’t invest properly with silly expectations and faulty assumptions. The further you step away from the machines and the noise, the more you lower your costs, the quicker you cut losses and the longer you ride winners, the more success you will have in the markets. No one tweet will make you happy or rich. Get over it.

It is impossible to stop the social web as it relates to markets. The markets are mood rings. The smartphone explosion has put a personal mood ring, opinion delivery system and talk your book extender in everyone’s hand. That part is pretty damn fair. There are sufficient rules in place to prosecute the thieves and criminals. No new rules need be created.

I admit I have been way way early (we are all underfunded :) ) for the pace at which Wall Street and banks move. The mistakes I will delve deep into in a later post, but none have been bad enough to kill us. The speed at which I have forced many ideas/features have been the biggest mistake. Wall Street can’t be forced to do anything. BUT – every day the momentum of the social and now mobile web grows. Today it is Carl Icahn using Twitter to post about his new position in $AAPL and his lovely call with Tim Cook. Of course I would love for Carl to be using Stocktwits, but it is almost impossible to compete with the media drip of Twitter. Eventually Carl will understand the $ and the added benefits of our service and community, but this is a huge step in the right direction for financial idea dissemination and the future of financial research on the web.

Carl is part of the new ‘Human Ticker’. It’s not clean…it’s f%#%king messy. But it’s yours to create for yourself. You can piggy back off me or you can build it from scratch yourself. There is no perfect tape, just yours to build. If $AAPL drops 50 points tomorrow, Carl is risking his reputation. Three bad calls in a row and Carl will be ridiculed. He is talking all the risk with his brand and reputation. It is not going to be as easy as you think for Carl to manipulate the markets and buyer beware to the chasers over time.

The biggest loser in this is CNBC. They can’t win this war if they continue to fight it with the same strategies and tactics. The tape has moved to the streams. Carl has tasted the joy and profit of the stream. The ultimate rush of power. He will now only use CNBC to promote his next idea on Twitter (soon Stocktwits :) ) or explain his action post dissemination on the web. CNBC can afford more eyeballs to watch and post to the stream than the rest of us, but spend most of their time promoting what is happening on television where they are limited to one feature/pimp at a time. It is not nearly efficient enough for the investor/trader of the future and today.

The biggest winners are you and me. We can follow Carl very easily, we can follow other incredible mentors, we can dip in and out of the streams when we want and we can ignore as much as we like.

I know that at Stocktwits we are here to hold your hands and make this transition as smooth as possible for as many of you as possible. We have been doing this for 5 years and get a thrill out of being a part of this revolution in markets.

Take advantage of it.