Another Stock-o-meter, this time by rediff.com [Or another drop in the ocean should we say?]
I really don’t understand how many more ’Stock-meters’ do we have to bear with! We already have the bible of stocks [atleast that’s what I feel!] in the form of Bloomberg.com and Reuters.com. Granted that it doesn’t have a database of all the listed companies in India. But then you have moneycontrol.com – the younger and the Indian sibling of these two sites – for the same. You will get whatever statistics you mightneed [and even those you might not need 
, sometimes even those which you might not have even heard of] on these sites. Besides these websites you have a host of other offerings like Google finance, Yahoo! Finance, Indiainfoline, Reliancemoney, ICICIdirect.com. These are in addition to other similar offerings by smaller sites [by user base ofcourse!] like Sharekhan.com, Religare.com etc.
It seems that Rediff [which, by the way, is listed on the NASDAQ – cool right?] has registered a copyright in its name for an analogue designed to show how “hot” is a stock. What I have been made to understand [partially though – I could not find much on their website!] by this is that it enables the users to reach a quick and snapshot conclusion about how a stock or mutual fund is fairing. Rediff.com India has already obtained copyright registration of a ‘virtual analogue representation´ titled as “How hot is a stock” having the features of an analogue dial [No wonder they are in such a tearing hurry. They have begun when the race is almost over!].
The analogue dial computes the results based on last 15 days trading figures and shows data of the latest trading price, volume traded, MF holdings, sales and net profit margin. The product also has a feature wherein web users can compare the stock with other stocks of that segment. Further, it also has separate segments for latest announcements of the said stock, shareholding, capital structure, market capitalization and quarterly results. Under the subheading of ‘report card’, Rediff.com shows the PE ratio, EPS, sales, face value, net profit margin and return on average equity.
Hmm.. It sounds good. But I personally feel it’s too little and very late! Wake up guys! You need to be ahead of the race, not behind it.
Another WATBlog bullshit article. Intern dude a tip: Try to be as neutral as possible. Unbaised journalism is wat would take you far…this slapstick comedy ain’t gonna fly for long!
Thanks piyush for your response. I dont think there is anything known as unbiased journalism! Either you take a stand/opinion or you just publish a press release. And if publishing a press release which has ultra beautifying words makes one an unbiased journalist (which according to me is quite brainless!) then im glad we write bullshit articles!
Well Intern – being in the online space you should atleast spend some time to understand things..now here is the real story…rediff has copyrighted the stock meter..its not new..its been there for a over a year (atleast thats when i started seeing it)..they have only copyrighted it now..my bet is that the users are finding the feature usefull..and rediff is only ensuring that other websites dont start using it too..also i did see one the popular finance channel using something similar to promote its website..so i guess its fair.. hope you will only see the good in it..and mature up fast
just a thot … shouldnt they call it the stock thermometer instead of barometer since they are measuring hotness
And to add to what Rajiv said.. this is watblog.. blogs are places for opinions ..to be discussed of course.. and opinions cannot be neutral it will kill us if we do… we give u news of course but they always come with our opinion.. coz we are bloggers before anything else..
Ok I don’t want this to seem like we gang up on someone who says bad about us.. hehe.. nothing of that sort..we just want to be clear with what our readers perceive us.. and comments make us really happy.. so thanks for being active on that Piyush.. dope u don’t take our views here in the wrong sense..
and..I promise we will be unbiased on watmedia.com ..(ok don’t go there yet)
Hey Rajiv and Maneesh
I think my comment was bit too harsh but gist remains the same i.e. you guys are some times too biased. I have been following this blog for quite sometime now and it is useful for me to track startup/tech market in India and elsewhere. However I do get pissed off reading articles like this.
Wikipedia says and I quote “Bias is a term used to describe a tendency or preference towards a particular perspective, ideology or result. All information and points of view can generate some form of bias. A person is generally said to be biased if a reasonable observer would conclude that the person is markedly influenced by inner biases, rendering it unlikely for them to be able to be objective. In careful usage bias refers to a belief that leads to a false judgment.”
Having a point of view is necessary but being biased is not necessary/desirable. Let me tell you that you guys are biased against a few portals out their like Bigadda. You have trying to undermine them and others. I think Bigadda did a good job by launching bigB’s blog and getting a lot of press(and I suppose traffic too).
So whats wrong with this story ? Well it is not objective! I think Rediff has some really good applications out their and while doing this story you should have evaluated it on the applications merits and shortcomings and NOT on what you think about Rediff on the whole. Even though a lot of applications out there are equivalent or similar to Rediff’s still it has got a lot of things that make Rediff’s stock app has some unique features and those make it useful. By your intern’s logic Google search and Gmail were also too late as there were like 10 different players in the market at that time when they launched their search and mail. All those players are history now(or almost)!! I am not saying here that Rediff’s will kill all others but dismissing something from the word go is not the right attitude.
As a regular reader I do expect some amount of objectivity and hope you guys will take it in your stride and understand that there are plenty of readers like me who wish to see good and well written stories here.
All in good faith.
Piyush
p.s. I am neither associated with Rediff or Bigadda (even remotely)
Hey piyush thanks for your feedback.. We love readers like you who come forward and help us improve.. We shall try our best to incorporate your feedback!
“Besides these websites you have a host of other offerings like Google finance, Yahoo! Finance, Indiainfoline, Reliancemoney, ICICIdirect.com. These are in addition to other similar offerings by smaller sites [by user base ofcourse!] like Sharekhan.com, Religare.com etc.” .
Hi Abhinav , Cant help but laugh my head off after reading this review .None of the above products that you mention in the above post caters to the same target segment that Rediff’s product caters to.Google finance, Yahoo! Finance are for international markets and for all other sites you need to register by paying money and they offer trading and demat account.The dial is so unique in my opinion because it gives me a health cheque on the stocks I am interested in and none of the Indian sites that you have mentioned above has a similar feature.
Please note that moneycontrol.com which is not even mentioned in the article is the only competitor for Rediff . Both these sites offer simple portfolio features and an ability to track your investments online from teh comfort of your office. Dude , If you see the race has only started and Rediff is the leader in the market with some very user friendly features (Unlike so many other Rediff products
) . I dont know whether you trade or use moneycontrol or Rediff but please do research before you write about anything. No wonder you were also in such a tearing hurry. You are trying to give a biased opinion about a good product by an Indian company even before trying to understand who it caters to or what it can be used for .
Hope to see better posts from WATBLOG team in future.
Thanks Kiran for pointing out the shortfalls. Even Google Finance and Yahoo! Finance now cater to the Indian markets but I agree that you need to have a Yahoo! and a Google ID respectively to access them. But one is not charged for signing up for them. Google finance will give you charts for the specific stock over a day, a week, a month, ayear or even 5 years. Besides that they provide a number of technical indicators like Exponential Moving Average (EMA), Bollinger bands, MACD, etc. This is in addition to the other usual statistics like the open/close price, highs , lows,etc The same is true with sites like ICICIDirect.com. And although they do provide financial services offline and charge for them, you don’t need to pay anything to access these facilities online. Infact you don’t even need to register on their sites to avail these services.
Regarding moneycontrol.com, I know that it is ,‘The Major’ site for stocks in India and I had mentioned about it in my rough draft. But due to my typographical error, the line got deleted [A genuine mistake ]. The line has been re-inserted & the revised post should be up in a jiffy.
The reason I am critical of Rediff is because I felt [and I continue to feel] that Rediff has indeed been very late in entering this domain given its reputation as harbinger of online services. Obliviously the views were personal and you are fully authorized to differ with them.
I hope that I have managed to respond to most of your comments if not all. Btw thanks for your feedback and do keep posting them as I am very much sure that they will help me to improve upon.
p.s. If you know of any better resources for stock analysis do share them as I am very much interested in it.