Thanks adiggs - I am not trying to stir up a bee's nest but the Forbes article bothers me. Since I cannot track institutional buying other than through the SEC filings, I just don't know how these guys would know "something" about institutional advances or declines in shares. I personally have friends in the industry who won't tell me anything about what their trading desk does - they would lose jobs or at least be written up as a compliance issue. SoX and compliance laws have become a bit more stringent. Bernie Madoff and all....
Here:
Whale Wisdom: Track Hedge Funds Using 13F Filings
That is the only mid-stream mild-correction (by Fidelity) I've seen since all the 13-F filings came out for Q3 compliance.
I'd like to know what kind of trouble someone would get into with the SEC for the Forbes authors who "imply" institutions are buying GS and TSLA (now) without actually knowing it. Perhaps they simply are "extending" the knowledge of the institutional deltas coming off the Q3 13-F filings. But that is 3-months ago.
That can be considered some type of market manipulation and, if not, should be, illegal without identifying when the action they are seeing was.
When I read many of the wide-variety of Motley Fool articles - I think "shouldn't these guys be considered illegal stock pumpers"? Since insider trading is illegal - the way they do it these days is by just making stuff up or using really impossible to pin-down phrases. And, I heard something recently by SCTY CEO Lydon Rive. He said "In eight years, solar pv arrays may not even be allowed to be installed without a battery standby system". Stuff like that makes me nuts because it simply is "marketing by speculation porn". It would be like the CEO of Chrysler saying "now that Fiat owns us, every American will probably buy a Chrysler product within the next 10 years".
Our market purchases and sales need factual guidance and folks like Motley Fool have taken stock speculation way too far and help create a frenzy for a wide variety of stocks. I guess the Forbes article triggered my "hey, wait a minute..." genes and that's why I made the comments on this page. When the market in general is anonymous and our choices are supposed to be "smart" then writers do us a disservice if they are writing in a manner meant to spread speculation and not facts.
i wrote a note to Forbes editors to ask what information the author uses for his statements.
