Pathetic things people do on Twitter - and I've done it all

I've got a love-hate relationship with Twitter. On the one hand, it's been very good to me in getting contacts globally, especially in finance. On the other hand, it's a time thief like nothing else. 

Well, maybe Reddit. 

One of the more annoying things on Twitter, is all the schemes people use to try to get followers and attention. 

Manual Retweets: 

A manual retweet is when people choose to not just push the retweet button in their app, but rather do the more time consuming method of writing RT in front of your handle. 

Often this requires editing of the actual text, reducing the meaning and readability. 

There are some rare cases in which manual retweets make sense, but 9 times out of 10, it's all about trying to freeload off of someone else. 

And hell yeah, I've done it. Plenty of times. It was purely done in a cynical way to get some more followers. And I repent. 

Mostly it's a problem cause it messes up your @reply-feed, making it harder to see real interactions. 

Subtweeting:

Oh, this happens so very much on Twitter, especially in the finance space. Be it to bitch about Keith Mccullough, Doug Kass or ... well, mostly it's about those two. 

It's the most cowardly thing to do, and hell yeah I've done it. Cause it's much easier than standing your ground. 

But if I cuss someone out, I always make sure to include them in it, to let them defend themselves and call me a bastard. 

By the way, referring to Keith Mccullough as "Keith" also counts as subtweeting. 

Twitter-fights:

It's a well-known fact that negativity sells better than positivity. That is why radio-DJs argue with other radio-DJs. 

And that is also why people on tiny, tiny, tiny mountain tops decide to go after other people on tiny, tiny, tiny mountain tops. 

When I went to San Diego last fall, this happened to me. A group of people started attacking me for no reason. It was ludacris (hell yeah I spell it like that!). But it was very annoying. And a lot of people noticed it. 

But the truth is, these bullshit controversies do nothing but undermine your credibility, and if you choose to spend your time attacking other people, maybe you should rethink how you live your life. 

Oh yeah, and I hold no grudges against anyone that ever attacks me, calls me a hack or anything else. 

All of the people I have slagged off over the years, like zerohedge and russian_market, I've apologised to, and I'm on good terms. 

The fake hedge fund manager:

There are some truly great hedge fund managers on Twitter, who manage huge amounts of money really well, like Cliff Asness and Peter Warren. 

Caveat regarding the headline; this one I've not done!

However, the vast majority of self proclaimed hedge fund managers are either simply not that, or run so small funds they are not even able to have employees. 

The very worst case of this, which rather beautifully exemplifies this problem, is the case of Keiko "Cakes" Kawamura. 

Ms. Kawamura was not a hedge fund manager, which would have been evident to anyone listening to her for more than 5 seconds. She was just selling some BS trading tips. 

But there are 100s of fake-anon accounts out there, some with big followings. 

Here's how to spot the fake ones; 

• They have hedge in the name
• They talk a lot of individual stocks
• They tend to latch on to fads; like HLF
• They are VERY active

No point in following these. They are mostly just uselessly trying to talk their book.

Scarily sometimes they manage to move big shares, like we've seen in the past. 

Also, as a bonus; given that CNBC does not vet guests, it's not surprising that so many of their self proclaimed hedge fund guests, rarely manage over $20 million, meaning that they are not able to sustain employees or cover basic costs. 

So if you see some hedge fund manager on CNBC, he's likely one of two things; a very tiny fish with enough spare time to waste a few hours for CNBC, or some activist investor that uses the media as part of his investment strategy. Only on a very few rare occasions do they have a real hedgie on. 

Fantastic new feature in the Infront terminal

It's fairly well established that I have a trading and information terminal of choice: Infront. 

Last week the guys at Infront added a fantastic new feature, that makes the list of reasons to sign up quite long. This time it's fund information. 

Long story short, you get a bunch of information normally only available to Morningstar clients, except it's right inside the terminal.

Go on, sign up for a free trial, why don't you?

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Howard Lindzons Predictions For 2014

In this week's Stocks and Scotch it was all Howard and myself. It was nice to get to have a chat with him and hear all of his thoughts about what's to come. 

I suggest you watch the clip. A lot of insights:

The ACTUAL retina display

This, this is the future: 

Huge reforms in China

Like we expected, the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, was just the start.

From Xinhua:

BEIJING, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- China has set 60 detailed targets in its soon-to-be-released reform roadmap to deepen overall reform, according to a senior economic official.

"'Reform' is the key word of the session's decision, with 60 detailed tasks covering 15 areas, each with far-reaching significance once implemented," said Yang Weimin, vice head of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs, a key economic policy-making institution.

The much anticipated Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee concluded on Tuesday with a communique giving clues about the reform agenda of the session's final decision statement, which is expected to be released soon.

The decision specified reform targets in the areas of economic, political, cultural, societal, ecological, and party progress to launch expansive and thorough reform, said Yang, who also took part in the draft of the decision.

Each area will have its own guiding principle to keep progress on track, Yang added.

Economic restructuring will lead the overall reform campaign, accounting for about half of the 15 major tasks, as the economy, after three decades of breakneck expansion, begins to slow down, burdened by industrial overcapacity, piles of debt and waning competitiveness.

The decision to allow the market to play a more "decisive" role in allocating resources is the top highlight of the agenda and the benchmark for reform assessment, as the core feature of the socialist market system, which was initiated in a landmark similar session 35 years ago, is to maximize resource use for better outcomes.

The country will try to better balance the role of the government and the market in economic development, according to the communique.

According to Yang, the government's power will be limited to macro-control, market monitoring, public service, environmental protection and social management, and more stakeholder are encouraged to enhance social management.

The decision proposes further defining the fiscal and tax mechanism to match and balance responsibilities of government agencies with their spending.

The current fiscal system was established in 1994 and delegates powers to local governments while reinforcing the central government's sway on the macroeconomy. The system has to be improved as many cash-strapped local governments now face debt problems.

State-owned enterprises and assets will experience further reforms as the decision sets new rules and targets to encourage private ownership to play an important role.

In addition, the session made the unprecedented decision to set up a monitoring system to promote ecological progress and to stem and punish environmental pollution and natural resources abuse, Yang said.

The new leadership set a timetable for concrete realization of the reform targets by the end of 2020 and will set up a top reform leadership group to push reform past the barriers of vested interests and avoid the country falling into the "middle-income trap."

"The determination to reform and the courage to break interest barriers is unprecedented," Yang said.