Wednesday, January 18, 2006 7:33:46 AM
Good morning Peter, Re: S.I. vs IHub.............
I got to spend time with Bob Zumbrunnen this last September. We talked about the similarities and differences between the two "products" - IHub and S.I. He views S.I. as being the larger cap market discussion site while IHub tends toward the smaller caps, micro caps and quite a few Canadian stocks. It's sort of like the traditional Value Line 1700 vs the "Expanded Edition" which covers 5000 stocks.
It's interesting that the AIM Users first migrated from Prodigy to S.I. after Prodigy's "Money Talk" bulletin boards started to fold up in '96 or '97. We prospered at SI because of it being a more open space for investors. No memberships to an ISP such as Prodigy were necessary, only a local ISP service to get connected got you in the door at SI. Later SI started to charge for membership. Somewhere along the way SI was bought out by others and nearly destroyed. We tried out the Motley Fool boards for a while and some other sites. IHub was just starting up at that time and we gave it a try, too.
I was familiar with Bob Z. by that time as he had been one of the main folks at S.I. in the olden days. I contacted him and we talked about moving the AIM BBs here. He not only agreed to help us move, but also to give our posters extra freebie posts just to encourage us. Many also became either paid members or were grandfathered in here.
What we found, to my delight, was that there were many frustrated AIMers out there who had never had a chance to post at S.I. because of the steep membership fee. I used to get a lot of emails with questions about AIM and had wondered why people chose to write to me directly and not just through SI's BBs. Well, it was the "cost of admission." So, the move to IHub brought out these long neglected AIMers and had them posting here at an incredible rate in the first year of the move.
Here it is over 18,000 posts later and it remains a very polite and helpful group. I like to think that we're also one of the more successful groups of investors who use a common method. Many survived the Millennium Crash better than their non-AIM brethren. Sure we all got banged up with the Tech Bust, but I think we recovered more quickly, also. Like in the old time cowboy movies, ours were "only flesh wounds." No arteries or bones were shattered!
Many good ideas and derivations of AIM have surfaced here and at SI over the years. IHub's generous "free zone" policy was very fertile ground for AIM posters from around the world.
I've been working more on portfolio design in more recent times as I've reached a comfort level with AIM's mechanics. As I realized early on, a significant portion of my overall "total return" is based upon proper selection of investment vehicles and proper structure of the overall portfolio. AIM's mechanics work just fine with essentially all the components of the portfolio and so becomes the management method used with all.
I note that as IHub becomes more popular a site, the AIM Users Bulletin Board seems to move further down the list of the top 100 boards. This is even as our "score" improves. We have more readers and a higher score than ever, but our overall rank is slipping. I guess we're just not as exciting as a penny stock forum!!
I still wander the halls at SI as it covers many more of my stocks with more active posting than here at IHub. I guess that means I'm more on the "larger cap" end of things than the small and micro cap side. This may be true of other AIMers, too. The two sites have merged in "look" quite a bit in the last few years since Bob Z. bought S.I. away from the previous owners. I think he deserves a lot of credit for his understanding of both sites and efforts to maintain their separate integrity.
I don't know if IHub is still the "best" place for AIMers to gather, but it sure seems to be about as good as we've ever had. I should probably have done a better job of cross-connecting SI and IHub when we first moved here. I should probably review how I've linked them since. For individual stock info, the combination is pretty broadly covered.
Thanks for hopping the fence once in a while and stopping in!
Best regards,
Tom
I got to spend time with Bob Zumbrunnen this last September. We talked about the similarities and differences between the two "products" - IHub and S.I. He views S.I. as being the larger cap market discussion site while IHub tends toward the smaller caps, micro caps and quite a few Canadian stocks. It's sort of like the traditional Value Line 1700 vs the "Expanded Edition" which covers 5000 stocks.
It's interesting that the AIM Users first migrated from Prodigy to S.I. after Prodigy's "Money Talk" bulletin boards started to fold up in '96 or '97. We prospered at SI because of it being a more open space for investors. No memberships to an ISP such as Prodigy were necessary, only a local ISP service to get connected got you in the door at SI. Later SI started to charge for membership. Somewhere along the way SI was bought out by others and nearly destroyed. We tried out the Motley Fool boards for a while and some other sites. IHub was just starting up at that time and we gave it a try, too.
I was familiar with Bob Z. by that time as he had been one of the main folks at S.I. in the olden days. I contacted him and we talked about moving the AIM BBs here. He not only agreed to help us move, but also to give our posters extra freebie posts just to encourage us. Many also became either paid members or were grandfathered in here.
What we found, to my delight, was that there were many frustrated AIMers out there who had never had a chance to post at S.I. because of the steep membership fee. I used to get a lot of emails with questions about AIM and had wondered why people chose to write to me directly and not just through SI's BBs. Well, it was the "cost of admission." So, the move to IHub brought out these long neglected AIMers and had them posting here at an incredible rate in the first year of the move.
Here it is over 18,000 posts later and it remains a very polite and helpful group. I like to think that we're also one of the more successful groups of investors who use a common method. Many survived the Millennium Crash better than their non-AIM brethren. Sure we all got banged up with the Tech Bust, but I think we recovered more quickly, also. Like in the old time cowboy movies, ours were "only flesh wounds." No arteries or bones were shattered!
Many good ideas and derivations of AIM have surfaced here and at SI over the years. IHub's generous "free zone" policy was very fertile ground for AIM posters from around the world.
I've been working more on portfolio design in more recent times as I've reached a comfort level with AIM's mechanics. As I realized early on, a significant portion of my overall "total return" is based upon proper selection of investment vehicles and proper structure of the overall portfolio. AIM's mechanics work just fine with essentially all the components of the portfolio and so becomes the management method used with all.
I note that as IHub becomes more popular a site, the AIM Users Bulletin Board seems to move further down the list of the top 100 boards. This is even as our "score" improves. We have more readers and a higher score than ever, but our overall rank is slipping. I guess we're just not as exciting as a penny stock forum!!
I still wander the halls at SI as it covers many more of my stocks with more active posting than here at IHub. I guess that means I'm more on the "larger cap" end of things than the small and micro cap side. This may be true of other AIMers, too. The two sites have merged in "look" quite a bit in the last few years since Bob Z. bought S.I. away from the previous owners. I think he deserves a lot of credit for his understanding of both sites and efforts to maintain their separate integrity.
I don't know if IHub is still the "best" place for AIMers to gather, but it sure seems to be about as good as we've ever had. I should probably have done a better job of cross-connecting SI and IHub when we first moved here. I should probably review how I've linked them since. For individual stock info, the combination is pretty broadly covered.
Thanks for hopping the fence once in a while and stopping in!
Best regards,
Tom
Port Washington, WI 53074
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