What’s In a Name

Way back in 2008, I picked the name Stocktwits. It was $6.99 on Go Daddy.

As the markets crashed in 2008, I was so angry at the banks, brokerages and execs for the endless panic and down days. I was a 20 year American Express customer with unlimited credit, but in the fall of 2008 while traveling abroad, they decided to cut my spending limits.

I have a long memory for the people and brands I hate.

Anyways, growing up in Toronto the word ‘twits’ was a derogatory term. As kids, my group of friends used it often. The definition:

The Motley Fool have done an incredible job building a community and brand for the retail investor using a play on the word fool.

To me, Stocktwits was a middle finger at the banking and brokerage idiots at the institutions (the Twits) that created the 2008 mess we were trading through.

Stocktwits would be the place where the retail public (people like me) could talk about stocks and markets all day long, sharing ideas, news and opinions. No television, no makeup, no fancy production and everyone with a chance to journal, build an audience and improve as a trader or investor.

I was inspired by Twitter and 140 character limitation, so we came up with the $cashtag and built Stocktwits on the Twitter API to get it off the ground.

BY 2009, Stocktwits had built it’s own standalone platform where are users could push messages to Twitter if they liked.

Today, the retail public has Stocktwits, Robinhood, Coinbase and hundreds of robo advisors to onboard the next generation of investors.

The incumbents still think we are the fools/twits, whether it’s Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon calling Bitcoin a scam or whether it’s Goldman’s Sack creating a new identity (Marcus) to begin their grift on the next generation.

To me the ‘Twits’ continue to be the legacy financial institutions that look down at everyone trying to level the playing filed and teach the language of finance and the markets to the next generation.