RealMoney Columnists--Infomercial???

A

AAAintheBeltway

I have noticed that RM is increasingly using chat room proprietors as intraday commentators. Now there are two from the same chat room,Supertrader.com , plus the ever present Shawn of MTrader, plus Chris of RT. My question is whether or not these people are paying for the privilege of touting their chat rooms. If they are, it strikes me as hugely inappropriate and borderline unethical for Cramer and co. not to disclose this.

Since Todd Harrison quit, the quality of intraday commentary has gone straight into the toilet. I have repeatedly told the editor he needs another hedge fund gunner to replace Todd. I could not understand why he didn't find one until it occurred to me they are probably using this colunn as an infomercial deal.
 
I'm a fan of Jay Shartsis. He seems to call tops and bottoms pretty well by using the put/call ratio. However, I think he was heavily short the past couple of days and missed the surge upwards. On the whole, though, he seems pretty legit.
 
AAA,

could be man.. i unsubscribed last week.. Todd was the only thing that really made it worth the money.. of course i enjoyed the chartmans stuff too, but isnt intraday.. people from mtrader - embarrasing.. and chris from rt would do better writing a column, not doing the intra-day commentary.. dont know shartis and the other guys.. definitly not worth my $$ infomercial or not..

-qwik
 
Sadly, RM is simply not what it used to be. Without Todd Harrison and the irreplaceable gem that goes by the name of Doug Kass from Seabreeze Partners. Kass was there for a short time but totally won my admiration to the same level as Toddo. Who will forget his short calls on Harley Davidson, AOL, and the housing stocks?

The others are simply good (Gary B. Smith, Meissler, Herb Greenberg, Chris from RT.com) But unfortunately what made RM.com invaluable was that you got what you couldn't get anywhere else! Now that is not true anymore.

:(
 
In my opinion, RealMoney has some real issues to deal with. Aside from the commentary problems already mentioned, I can't believe they have the nerve to run between 5 and 17 advertisements per page in a paid subscription area. Although it's typical to see that many ads on a free site, it's really unusual to see so many flashing buttons, banners, and tiles in an area that people are paying $199 per year to access. I mean, one of the primary perks of paying for premium content on many sites is that it's you don't have to deal with advertisements.

The funny part about all this is that they are still losing millions every quarter. If they keep it up, there won't be any RealMoney.com to talk about in a few more quarters.

Regarding the infommerical stuff, it's probably much cheaper for them to use chat room proprietors that it is for them to hire a replacement for Todd Harrison. Todd Harrison never really had any product to push, but the chat guys do. RealMoney is trying to keep their costs low by using the chat crowd for commentators and in return the chat guys get exposure for their sites that would otherwise be very expensive. I could be wrong of course, but that's what it looks like to me as an outsider.
 
After Jay Shartsis' first column, I emailed a comment. Back came a long ad for his business! I was surprised because no other professional, including two other columnists for thestreet.com, have responded to my emails with solicitations.

Worse still, a few days later, I received another long solicitation that was sent to me and a long list of other people (maybe 30-50). I protect my email address and was frustrated that it was distributed in this way. I consider this unprofessional and possibly unethical. (Would appreciate comments on this since I am unfamiliar with professional standards and ethics for people in Shartsis' profession.)

Blocked emails from Shartsis. Wrote compliants for Shartsis and editor of thestreet.com, but haven't sent them.
 
I also got the ads from Jay. I wrote him in the hopes that he would mention the attempt of the insiders to limit option trading in RM.com and back came an advertisement for his buisiness.
:confused: :confused:
 
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