… piling on here a little bit …
I think that people seem to forget: Everybody needs to remember all the time that although it’s hosted by the Fool, this is a public board and not part of any paid subscription service. Personally, I’m relatively new here, having lurked for several months before making my first post here a couple of months ago. I have no idea whether the discontent that I’ve read over the past few days is mostly from newbies like me, or more veteran readers, but regardless, there seems to be some significant understanding about how this works.
For Fool paid services, they have strict trading rules about preannouncing trades made by the portfolio services and for blackout periods before and after any relevant trade of any sort by a Fool employee. But this board is not like that. It is a public discussion board. But instead of discussing politics or humor or some other topic, Saul has set up a board to discuss his own personal investing philosophy, purely on his own terms, and the Fool has agreed to host it. Because this is a free discussion board and not part of a paid subscription service, in theory it could just as easily been hosted on Yahoo or some other site, but Saul choose TMF. But that doesn’t mean that he should be subject to any of the rules intended for paid services.
If you’re not happy with the way that Saul shares information, you’re certainly free to leave, just as you were free to join and read. And by that I literally mean “free”. I’m sure that if any poster was part of some market manipulation or other similarly egregious behavior, TMF would intervene and shut it down. Otherwise, I don’t see any serious restrictions are relevant or should be expected.
As I mentioned, I’m relatively new here, and still getting a feel for the place. But as I slowly get a feel for how things work around here, I am under no allusions as to what to expect. I think that TMF will ensure that we get no less than we paid for (i.e., zero), but whether or not you get more than you paid for is entirely up to each of us. I for one always follow a new source for quite awhile before I have enough confidence in it before taking any sort of action based on what I’m reading. And in any case, any subsequent actions are my own, not somebody else’s responsibility. If you think that you’re getting nothing of value, well …
… FYI, I am not a Fool employee nor in any way formally affiliated with Fooldom, other than that I pay them a lot of money for subscription services totally unrelated to access to this particular board. In fact, I’m too lazy to look up the actual rules regarding the expected behavior of hosts of free public services, or even if such rules exist … if anybody reading this is sufficiently concerned, feel free to look it up on your own if you want to. And if you find some rules that have been violated (such as you can’t speak your mind in real time and then change your mind), please feel free to share those details, so we can all learn from it. But as far as I understand, Saul doesn’t owe us anything here – nor should we expect anything from him. He and the other active posters here have simply decided to share their thoughts here in public rather than in some private chatroom somewhere else. For that I am grateful, and hoping to learn something.
as always, i am full of carp