A Browser Window Into SIRI Psychology
Among the tools I use is the stock search on the Yahoo! Finance page. Like Amazon's searches, the Yahoo! ticker search points out other stocks that investors have looked up: People viewing XXX also viewed ....
I started off just playing a game with myself when I was bored -- trying to get from one stock to another with the least amount of steps. But this gadget also offers an interesting way to peek into investor psychology.
The game goes like this: First, I pull up the quote for "SIRI," which is, of course, satellite radio company Sirius XM(SIRI) . Then I challenge myself to get to the quote page for Apple(AAPL) using only the following links to related tickers -- People viewing SIRI also viewed: P RAD NFLX ALU LMCA S.
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That one is actually pretty easy. Linking to NFLX allows you to link to AMZN, which provides GOOG as a "people viewing ..." choice. GOOG then naturally includes a link to get to AAPL's quote page. Perfectly logical.
And, of course, this exercise, which you can really up the level of difficulty on, only proves what a complete and total geek of a loser I am.
But then I took a closer look at the SIRI ticker results. For obvious reasons, it includes People viewing ... links to Liberty Media(LMCA) and Pandora(P) . I'm not sure why SIRI watchers also view Netflix(NFLX) , but it's pretty obvious why they track Rite Aid(RAD) , Alcatel-Lucent(ALU) and Sprint(S) .
As Cramer cautioned last year, the hands that hold SIRI are attached to "penny stock guys" and that's often not the best crew to be in the company of. It should come as no surprise that the folks who check SIRI's price obsessively also concern themselves with other low-priced hopes and dreams such as RAD, ALU and S.
For the most part, these stocks represent dead money. But they also serve as poster children for the penny stock dream SIRI's most ardent bulls chase.