I thought about this a lot. Initially, I wanted phone authentication, but decided to do that next time when the problem arises. Then I realised that the goal of this is long term investing, I.e. 3-5-10 years. I doubt these “return miners” can do so over the long term while writing good insightful posts on their positions to build enough reputation to thrive on the platform.
But then again, it’s still possible to maintain two to three accounts running different strategies. And so moving forward, I’d either try phone auth or Stripe’s identity verification.
Realistically if enough value exists a secondary-market selling "successful" accounts will crop up and anyone wanting to harvest leads on the forum will purchase one of those.
The site sounds cool but there are huge systemic problems with web based reputation systems. The reputation system can never be bullet proof, so maybe focus on other facets of the project IMO (unless your passion is the reputation system and fraud prevention).
You’re right. Currently high frequency trades are penalised by commissions which has a fixed component. I’m still banging my head trying to figure out a simulated tax environment, but I’ll get it done.
The goal is to make it as perfect as it can as an imperfect proxy to investor skill.
It does not as of now, but I’ll be working on shorting soon. The goal was to initially find good long term companies to invest in.
Regarding the verification email, I’m using Firebase Auth now, will figure out the cause. Thanks for letting me know! Have you tried resending the verification email?
I did check my spam folder and it didn't get any messages. But now, the third email got instantly delivered, into the spam folder (hosted by Fastmail), and I marked them as Not Junk.
Some more question/feedback:
- Is it a design decision that the commissions are high? I got 13 cents per share (on a stock priced at 49.89). I would expect more like 0.35 cents per share. I suppose that is forcing more long-term holding...
- I already find my trading in this website is not representative of my positions held in my actual portfolio. It's a lot less well balanced.
- I could trade when the market's closed -- at 3:10 AM ET. But S&P, Dow, Nasdaq, and Russell 2000 futures are running overnight. So that opens up a possible arbitrage. There is a similar one on individual stocks for any after-extended-hours news -- such as selling TWTR before pre-market hours on Friday (Oct 21).
- When I search for "BA" in the ticker lookup, the option "The Boeing Company - BA" was way down the list. The search box should prioritize exact match ticker lookups over company name lookups.
(1) yes high commissions are designed to promote long term holdings (hence the name of the platform). I’m still trying to figure out simulated taxes.
(2) hmm, do you mind elaborating? For me, it’s not an exact replica of my personal portfolio, but moving forward it should be a relatively good proxy to it.
(3) I think the commissions itself will eliminate profits from minor arbitrage, but large deviations are possible to arbitrage successfully. Thanks for this, I’ve added a ticket to solve this issue. Will implement open market timings for trades.
(4) Search is far from optimal for now... super rough MVP. Will improve of course.
(1) It would be hilarious if you included state taxes based on IP.
I think having no taxes would be a decent decision -- it could be an IRA.
(2) This is just a basic paper trading vs. real money difference in behavior -- TWTR at 49.94 will probably jump 8.4% in a week, so I went all in -- also, the presence of a leaderboard would reward more high variance decision-making. But what can you do.
