Piqqem FAQ

Piqqem is a web application that gathers stock sentiments from its users, analyzes them, and then displays aggregate results back to users. Users are encouraged to submit as much information as possible, giving us a large and diverse pool of data. In turn, this pool provides a real, working advantage over even seasoned stock market pros - those who might study securities in great depth but don't have access to anything as comprehensive as our shared knowledge base.

Our belief is that every individual has some unique knowledge that is relevant to at least some set of stocks. That knowledge may be deep or superficial, but it doesn't really matter because when there are large numbers of people independently expressing their opinions that data can be analyzed to determine the relative agreement or disagreement of users - a valuable metric either way. The stock market wisdom we're after resides not in any particular individual, but in the aggregate opinion of the crowd. Even without any individual realizing it, the crowd can gauge the potential of stocks to move up or down, and spot trends well before the best analysts. Pretty cool that there might be stock market wisdom none of us has individually, but all of us have collectively, don't you think? We do.

Our system is based on the concept of the "wisdom of crowds" which has been shown to work in many domains. For more info on how the wisdom of crowds works, we suggest checking out The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.

If Piqqem invalidates itself, this means that there are a huge number of people trading on crowd wisdom, which means that the Piqqem crowd would have been accurate enough to get itself to that point, hence Piqqers would have made considerable money already. In other words, it would have been Piqqem's success that, in turn, made it invalidate itself. Every system that tries to predict the market has this potential problem, but to date, it hasn't actually happened.

Experienced investors are already familiar with tried and true stock data and indicators - fundamentals, P/E Ratios, dividend histories, inflation data, etc. - which are cited to justify their stock movement predictions. But the amount of time any one individual can devote to analyzing stocks is miniscule compared to the total brainpower of a thriving online community. With each member contributing a piece of the puzzle, Piqqem can paint a more ornate rendering of the big picture: the future potential of a given stock.

You should use Piqqem because it's a unique source of stock market opinion. Oh, and we think it will be fun too.

You don't need to know much about stocks to be a valuable contributor to Piqqem. You may think you don't know enough about a company to vote on whether its stock will go up or down, but we believe that, on some level, you know more than you think you do. Maybe you had a good experience with a company's product, or think that a company is doing something completely insensible. For purposes of elaborating the opinion of the crowd, this is all valuable information.

There's absolutely no need to study a stock before making a prediction. We want all sorts of opinions from our crowd, whether they're based on a casual appraisal or years of tedious tracking. Even if all you have is your gut feeling about some stock, let us know about it anyway. Many other people are doing the same thing, and patterns are bound to emerge.

Piqqem differs from other sites in that we believe the crowd has more knowledge than any single individual. Instead of looking for the best individual stock picker and weighting votes based on investment ability, we look at aggregate opinion and allow everyone to vote as much as they want. This orientation towards crowd wisdom manifests itself in our crowd indicators, such as top rated stocks, most active stocks, stocks with most rising sentiment, and stocks with most falling sentiment.

Good question. Not exactly. The stock market is a summation of the demand and supply of stock market shares, in which few big buyers following the advice of few expert analysts completely overwhelm individual investors. Piqqem, on the other hand, gives an equal vote to all investors - whether expert or not - therefore providing a much more accurate representation of what the crowd thinks. Besides, the stock price today is what investors think of the company today - we want to know where the stock price is going in the future.

Another good question. And again, not exactly. Some investors follow the advice of expert analysts; others invest based on personal experience with products, current events, intuition, and other variables. So, what the crowd thinks won't necessarily be equivalent to what expert analysts think.

No. You still need to use your broker to execute trades.

Absolutely not! Every investor should study a stock carefully before making an actual investment. Piqqem doesn't recommend buying or selling any particular stock, it just gives you unique tools for making better decisions. By using crowd indicators in combination with traditional financial data, we believe you can invest more effectively.

Each stock has its own page - an equity page. The is the page from which users can make predictions and access all the information associated with that equity. Each equity page has quick access to sentiment data, user takes and other interesting information.

Lists are groupings of equities that make it really easy for you to go from one equity page to another while making Piqqs, and to find other equities that you may want to make Piqqs on.

A Quick Piqq is an individual user's expression of sentiment of a particular stock. Users make Quick Piqqs by clicking on one of the icons next to the stock - ranging from double-down arrows for strongly negative sentiment to double-up arrows for strongly positive sentiment. Quick Piqqs can be made anytime, have no exact prices or target dates, but expire after 90 days. If you change your mind about a stock just re-vote, the new vote will supercede the prior vote.

We don't want to taint your opinion of the stock. We've found that requiring a Quick Piqq to see the crowd's sentiment is also a great incentive to get members to vote.

Simply re-vote by selecting the icon corresponding to your new sentiment. Your new vote will supercede your prior vote.

Yes, your Quick Piqqs expire after 90 days. You should re-vote before expiration if you want your sentiment to still count.

Wisdom refers to data we aggregate from the crowd. We run proprietary algorithms over all the data we collect in order to report it back in interesting ways.

A User Take is a short comment on how you feel about a particular stock. When you make a Quick Piqq, you can type your take in the text box asking you to "Share your Take."

No. Your User Take for a particular stock is your current opinion about that stock. That said, you're welcome to change your User Takes as often as you like.

User Takes are listed in chronological order, and you can respond directly to someone else's take in your own. But be aware that users can change their takes at any time, so your take will maintain its coherency better if it's self-contained.

Twitter is a short-messaging service (only 140 characters) which allows you to communicate with friends and peers. If you have a Twitter account, you can follow Piqqem on Twitter for updates from Piqqem HQ.

A "tweet" is simply a single message on Twitter. We noticed a lot of similarities between our User Takes and people "tweeting" on stocks, so we thought it would be cool to bring them into the site.

We bring in tweets with automated searches. Searching for "apple" would return any tweets talking about the stock or the fruit. Going through the stream of tweets by hand would be a monumental task, so we trust that more tweets will be on topic than off topic.

Yes! We encourage you to do so--by linking your Twitter handle to your Piqqem account on your preferences page, we'll automatically follow you on Twitter and scan your tweets for any comments on the stock market.

Yes! Not only that, but you can vote and update your User Take with a single tweet! Simply direct your message "@piqqem" and include the following:

• a ticker symbol with either the standard hash-tag (#AMZN) or a dollar sign ($ADBE)
• add your sentiment rating: --, -, =, +, and ++ correspond to double-down, single-down, neutral, single-up, and double-up, respectively
• give us a comment on the stock with whatever space is left.

• @piqqem ++ $aapl
• @piqqem - #goog
• @piqqem $msft - I just heard they are going to have 5 different Win7 versions. When will they ever learn? I'm guessing never.
• @piqqem ++ Will GM go belly up? Steel prices going back up, labor costs down. #GM
• @piqqem I'm personally keeping them afloat, but the stores aren't as busy lately. = $cost

No worries! Feel free to email our illustrious engineers at: support@piqqem.com.

Glad you asked! Join us on Facebook by visiting our page and clicking on "Become a Fan" in the upper right. You can also follow us on Twitter by visiting our profile and clicking "Follow." (Note that you must already have Facebook and Twitter accounts, but if you don't already, this may be the impetus you needed.)