I don’t think so, but I never went to Harvard or had $1 billion to manage around an algorithm. Google $goog can’t be transparent with their algorithms and had to pull out of China because of it (maybe).

I have been thinking about one of my rants on the financial industry that ‘Transparency is the NEW Alpha’.

You could say the same thing about many industries. Advertising comes to mind. I will come back to that.

Alpha has been the buzzword in the hedge fund industry for a long time. Felix Salmon, always grumpy, had a good post way back in 2006 on the subject of ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’. If Al Pacino were making good movies today he would star in ‘AND ‘ALPHA’ for All’:

I am in the camp that Transparency can be your ‘Alpha’. The market will do what the market will do so my ‘Alpha’ (secret sauce) is just being available and not too confusing.

Back to advertising…

As an entrepreneur in the web space, advertising sickens me. It is beyond confusing. While the technology was supposed to simplify things, this idiot would argue otherwise. Of course there are good people, businesses and technologies, but beyond adsense and keyword bidding, little makes common sense. It feels like everyone in media, content and advertising is scared of the real numbers. Furthermore, I don’t think people know what to truly measure. Other than the financial space, there seems to be no bigger industry with a ‘moat’ around the truth, than advertising.

I am hoping that will change. I think transparency is an edge in 2010 and beyond to bring that change.

We need a transparency bubble in advertising and finance and we will get it.

This tweet made my year from someone I have not ever met:

@MrOpportunistic : I love the new Stocktwits. It is like @howardlindzon took heaven and stocks and combined the too and out came this. Thank you so much.

I would add that it was mostly Chris, Soren, Phil, Justin, Shawn, Dustin, Leigh, Jeremy, and Tadas that have made the site features and design what it is today.

So – what are my favorite features?

1. We have expanded the ability for users to filter the stream. New users need to find the information they want fast. We now have equities/futures/options /forex/futures/suggested and many deeper segment within equities right at your fingertips.

2. You can now BLOCK people that you don’t want to hear so you DO NOT have to rely on just our taste. You can be your own Stocktwits moderator to continually improve your personal experience. Here is the link .

3. On Abnormal Returns today we launched threaded stories AND the ability for people to submit links to their posts or the posts/articles of others to help our algorithms and curators find the most timely and important market and stock related articles in real time.

4. POP OUT Stocktwits.tv is a cool way to experience our investing/trading channel. The button is on our main page. We are working hard towards EIGHT hours than 24 hours of original daily programming and the first true idea video network on the web.

5. Pop Out Streams. This is a great way to help you focus just on the streams that you need, especially great around earnings announcements and other news events.

I believe that the Stocktwits Desktop is the ultimate way to experience Stocktwits and Twitter together, but the web is my home for the most part and I am happy to have all the functionality that I had with Desktop even if the visual experience is a little different.

I put this short video together on Friday to help people see all the functionality of the new sites working together.

Here is a shorter version that Sunny put together with some key features and the sign up process:

There are A LOT of new features and goodies coming to make the experience better across many platforms. PLEASE, PLEASE let us know in the comments what we can do to keep making the features better and the community stronger.

YOUR problem is that Wall Streeters just booked their sweet gains in the form of bonuses and you are chasing momentum.

The market is thick with breakouts and the price momentum is beautiful. There is no reason for 99 percent of investors to fight the tape.

BUT, you don’t chase wildly. You should not confuse this great tape with your intelligence.

The elastic band has been stretched pretty far in historical terms. Take a look at the ROLLING ONE-YEAR RETURN for the S&P . Of course we could keep going, but historically we are in some relatively uncharted waters.

There IS risk despite the risk free trade available to banks and the smart folks willing to borrow to their eyeballs with cheap money.

If I knew what it was and when it would happen, I would share it.

The housing bubble was predicted by EVERYBODY, yet Michael Lewis says maybe 20 people made money off it. That’s pretty insane seeing that almost 2 trillion was lost.

Enjoy the tape and the easy money, but know it will end extremely bad for most.

As I was getting the grey removed from my hair today, I started thinking about Nadsaq 5,000.  I mean…all those Nasdaq points and not one good hair or aging solution…

It has truly been an amazing 10 years since Nasdaq 5,000 in March 2000. It was a pretty amazing two years leading up to that as well.

I started my small hedge fund in June, 1998 and knew amazingly little. I can’t believe how little I know 12 years later.

Ten years from now, I will have no hair on my head and cabbage size patches in my nose and ears and time will be my enemy.

In January of 2000 I invested in a Q round of Cars Direct. A sure thing. It’s finally public and I am still down 90 percent. Time just makes that pig hurt more. As part of that same deal, I HAD to invest in Viva.com. It was the horse with three legs and it should have died a horrible death. It became Rent.com and was purchased by Ebay for $450 million in cash after almost shutting down in 2001. I am a genius and time can’t stop me biiitches.

I could go on but it would cut into my Twitter time.

There is only one lesson…stay in the game. Yutz’s like me are surviving and thriving.

Fat pitches are everywhere.

The markets can be very complicated…or insanely simple. The hardest part of investing is keeping it simple. The second hardest part is finding someone to help you keep it simple and than someone else to back that person up and so on….

I love reading about the economy and the markets, but for the time spent, I might have been better off as a lawyer just billing my time .

For all the beginners and those looking for a fresh start, this post is for you.

Here are ten rules to follow to enjoy the Stock Market:

1. You are not privy to inside information. Ignore tips.

2. If you are investing fake money or money you cannot afford, you should be working to earn and save enough money to do it with money you can afford to invest with.

3. Once you have enough money to invest (5-10 individual stocks) just start. Pull the freaking trigger. Feel the rush.

4. STOP doing it for the rush.

5. If you are going to invest, keep your costs as low as possible. Be cheap.

6. Learn to recognize healthy markets. I define healthy as hundreds of uptrending stocks with institutional support. Stocks trading above $15-$20 with volume of 500,000 shares or more. I want to fish when/where fish are jumping in the boat.

7. Read less about stocks and markets. A daily check at an aggregator like AbnormalRetrums.com is truly all you need to stay ‘cocktail party’ smart.

8. Prune Prune Prune…NEVER get to the point where you dread looking at your statement. NEVER. Find a backup to hold you accountable. Find another.

9. Keep a journal, blog, Stocktwits account..something to keep you even more honest with at least yourself. You will invest better.

Not sure if I missed something so please chime in with your thoughts so I can fill in a tenth….

It makes sense that the market (especially the Nasdaq) is rallying into the iPad release of early April and the momentum should carry through until at least May.

I have blogged about the importance of the iPad to the financial web .

In 1994 we got the Motley Fool. In 1998 we got TheStreet.com. It has been a black hole for financial web innovation since (save Interactive Brokers and Baby ETrade).

Cramer could have should have owned Wall Street and chose the make-up and television. For you home gamers, Cramer has done extremely well financially but $TSCM has a $110 million market cap (after doubling the last few months) with a $60 million on the balance sheet. Other than Bloomberg, which is private and charges $2,000/month, there are few exciting pure plays in the financial web. That is just wrong.

While quant funds continue to exploit what is left of any alpha in the markets, I believe that ‘Transparency is the new Alpha’.

I am excited for April and you should be too.

I don’t want to know them.

After spending so much time in Coronado, California though, a sliver of America that is almost perfect but has many of the same problems (real estate, housing) as the rest of America, I would rethink.

It starts with community. Communities are miracles for sure but there needs to be one for significant change to happen. The community needs to be completely supportive (good scenairo) or completely apathetic.

In Howard’s America, there would be no credit cards. We would assume EVERYONE is broke except for those with credit scores above say 700 or 800. We would RESET.

Capital One…broken up (I am short Capital One and seems like I always am). American Express (no position, just torn up cards)…adios.

Best Buy….see ya. I would save Radio Shack, because selling chords, headphones and battteries from a local strip mall is a noble business, but it would accept debit cards or cash only.

If you must use a CREDIT CARD to buy a 46 inch, flat screen television, you can’t have it. There is NOTHING in a Best Buy that this country needs (no position).

Bank of America and Citibank would have their credit card operations taken away. They have lost their priviledge. Chase Manhattan too. Their dumb iPhone app seals that assanine bank.

Banks take deposits in Howard’ America and they lend it to American citizens .Equifax and Transunion no longer have authority over credit ratings, your social graph does.

Just a start. I do think some of these changes are possible by just consuming with responsibility. They do not require any radical Lindzon policies.

Stop spending.

I had him on my show this Wednesday and asked for a good LIVE example of a trade that he was in with his subscribers. He walked us through $ITMN (minute 17 that begins) and how to manage the risk/reward of a stock (company) about to release major FDA news. On Friday, the stock was up in a gynormous fashion and Steven’s subscribers are happy once again.

If you want to learn about options and the myriad of ways to trade events and manage portfolio risk, you should subscribe to Steven Place . He will make you a better investor.

He loves baseball and has a sweet swing in the cage, but live, 10 year old wild pitching is hard to hit. He had two walks and got a few cuts in.

He is starting at second base.

I was more nervous that a ball would be hit to him than he was.

In the second inning, the bases were loaded and a seriously hard hit line drive was hit. Not sure if the ball caught him or he caught the ball, but it happened.

Game ball.

As good a feeling as an internet exit.

Life is good.

HERE YOU GO .