The Traderszone Network

Over the last few years the world has changed dramatically for traders. New places to trade, much cheaper prices, combined with a wide range of uniquely focused (some might say, exotic) product offerings have consistently expanded profit opportunities for traders of all experience levels.

And despite the upheaval caused to some in the industry over the past dozen or so years (in particular, the old-school brokers), these changes seem to have been extremely beneficial to the markets at large. No question, digital technology has helped make trading much simpler and more accessible for both individuals and larger entities alike.

As evidence, look to the array of Internet brokers that offer round-the-clock, browser-based order fills. An online smorgasbord of underlying instruments that, up until just a few years ago was only accessible to the most sophisticated managers, is now available to most traders. And real-time market-data providers now offer timely and consistent updates from around the globe. Add to this the fact that hundreds (possibly thousands) of developers and software publishers have sprung up in recent years to create programs that help traders crunch all of this data together in hopes of making huge profits. (more…)

Stock trader Timothy Sykes is apparently one of the first people to sign up for a new premium Twitter service, SuperChirp, that allows publishers to charge for their twit streams. Sykes is telling his current 3,200+ followers on Twitter to sign up for his $9.99/month “premium” SuperChirp Twitterstream quickly because in his own words “…rest assured, I ain’t doing anything for $10/month, grab this deal now because I can guarantee you, my private Twitterfeed will be more like $99-$499/month.” Sykes goes on to say that he’s not exactly sure how he will integrate SuperChirp into the rest of his product offerings but he continues by saying “…prices are going up to $50/month next week in a further effort to weed out people too poor/leveraged/unfit to trade.”

Sykes, a big presence on Covestor, is obviously not without his detractors. Gawker.com columnist Ryan Tate declares SuperChirp as, “a new company [that] allows you to pay for select tweets. To prove this is a terrible idea, fallen loudmouth banker Tim Sykes has jumped on board.” Tate goes on to describe the service as “… bravely going into the business of selling access to Twitterized brain farts.” And continued by saying that Sykes ended his hedge fund career in 2007 with foolish stock bets, earning the title “Trading’s Buffoon.”

While Gawker and Sykes appear to have some history together, all bombast aside, Sykes does have a fairly impressive track record at the relatively transparent Covestor. In addition, we here at traderszone.net have long thought that Twitter, or some similar type of service, could end up being a valuable aide to investors who want access to a variety of data sources in a real-time , lightweight and low-cost manner. Perhaps this is the beginning of that evolution.