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by timtamboy63 4256 days ago
Totally see what you're saying, and we definitely want to get into the educational aspect at some point. But Netflix fell because of earnings, and GTAT was a fundamentally horrible company (our site wouldn't have recommended it). From what we've seen, retail investors tend to lose money when they invest with their gut, and that's the biggest issue. They hear some news and go and buy that company. They don't know how to do the fundamental analysis, and look at income statements, etc - that's what we're really trying to solve. I agree with not really trusting the analyst target price - we were actually debating whether to keep that there or not, but I disagree that technical analysis can't give you good, long term picks along with a little research.

I'd love to hear more about your thoughts. Think you could shoot me an email at chintan@capp.io?

1 comments

Will do. Point about NFLX wasn't the drop -- stocks go down and it's almost always stair-steps up, elevator down. It was that literally just days before ER CNBC put an analyst on TV crowing about $600 PT. How many millions of dollars did that person lose for the total viewership of CNBC and other outlets that carried her advice?

You read an analyst report from Goldman saying "we like apple going into the fall, you should buy apple." This is back when Apple is $500-600 a share. That's just the worst advice. You know what would be a lot better for a small investor? If you're bullish on Apple, go buy the at-the-money call spread. It will cost you a fraction of the share price and let you capture $5, 10, 20+ in upside if Apple moves up (depending on how much you want to pay for the spread). Anyway, this is obviously a subject I'm passionate about :)

Congrats again, guys. Enjoy the spike today, HN front page is still the 52 week high on all of our traffic charts!

Agree with your point on the options spreads, but we wanted to gear our focus towards solely stock investments since that's the majority of the retail investor population.

You're right about AAPL being too expensive (back at $600) for the average investor and that's something we're beginning to focus on. We'd like to add more personalization so our recommendations take into account factors such as risk profile, age, account value, etc.

Again, our goal is to help less experienced investors make smarter investments over the long term and teach them "why" along the way.

Thanks for your feedback again! Definitely points we'll be taking into account.

Options might not be the best advice for the target audience.
I can understand why a lot of people think that way. Check out my reply above for more color on the subject.