[Evan]

A good use of this forum is to talk about prospective investments in specific companies. However, when people post about these things it tends to be something like "I want to buy ABC, do you guys think I will make millions or go broke".

I think if we got a regular format for these posts they could be a lot more useful. Think of the poker forums. Start with reads, give the action street by street, maybe include thoughts on individual streets and then any closing remakrs or questions.

My suggestions isn't really a format as much as just some things that should be included. Here's a few off the top of my head:

-Link to most recent 10K in PDF and excel formats (this can usually be found on the investor relations section of the comapny's website)
-Description of what they do (the Profile from Yahoo Finance is usually pretty good for this if you don't want to do too much work)
-Competing firms (again, Yahoo Finance comps should do fine, Hoover's usually has a better list of comps)
-Catalysts that you know about and we might not
-A few metrics (TTM earnings, FCF, growth, ROE, whatever you think is important given the company and the industry)


Hopefully others can add a few more ideas.


If your investment is going to be on a timeframe such that I may not have a chance to eat between the time you buy and sell it then this may not be applicable. In that case I think you should specify that in the title. Something like "BGG - Swing trade bollinger band analysis, planning to buy and sell before you finish reading this sentence....". Whatever you're usuing, just make it clear what your intentions are since there seems to be a pretty noticable distinction between investors and speculators (for lack of a better term) on this site. Personally I'm not that interested in reading a post about a stock you're buying based on the Fibonacci Sequence. Likewise, I'm sure many of you badass traders aren't interested in the stuff that I do/write. I think making it clear in the title will make this forum a lot more efficient.


Anyway, that's just a few ideas. Please add more if you have them.