I’m in favor of the ticker cloud if the information is delayed. I don’t want to see my picks appear before the market opens. Just sayin’.
I already added a restriction to only include holdings that are at least 5 days old. The list refreshes twice per day.
aurelaurel-
The 5 days waiting period Marco just put on should let you get in before the ticker of any of your stocks appears in the box.
The appearance of stocks in the box adds some buying pressure to each of them, which is something you want. Most financial listserves are full of people who are “talking their book”, telling you what they have bought and why you should buy these stocks as well. Since you find some overlap between your portfolio and the tickers in the box, the appearance of these tickers in the box is a great help to your portfolio.
You don’t even have to buy before the tickers appear. Most of these tickers seem to last for at least a few weeks, and while they are there they put upward pressure on the prices of the tickers.
I, too, find an overlap between what I am holding and the stocks mentioned in the box. In fact, of the 12 stocks in my portfolio, 7 are in the box. But I would like everyone to see what is in the box, so it will put upward pressure on these 7 holdings.
-Bob
At the risk of being a contrarian I don’t see what the fuss is all about. Any of us who are screening for growth or value are already seeing these names. Someone who woud invest based on symbols in a tag cloud are doomed to fail anyway and unlikely to be on P123 for very long. Most of the symbols that I see there are aalready on one of my value or grwth screens and tend to be large cap names…so less likely to be subject to front running.
I understand how people see the feature as a win/win. Nonetheless I would prefer an opt out. A big part of the allure of P123 is the idea that I’m taking control of my trading. My results are the result of what I’m doing. When decisions are made that could arguably affect me where I am not given an option, I lose that sense of control. Should things head south in the future, I want to be able to fully own the outcome and not be left with the nagging thought that it was avoidable and someone else is to blame.
Is anything being done about this? Why does the new interface prevent hyperlinks to P123 web-pages and can anything be done about it. If the answer is no, then let us know.
Hello, I am in favor of " - ability for someone to opt out from the statistics from My Account setting". It is a question of trust. I don’t care about the win/win or whatever… If you say that my portfolio is private, then it is not public ! Thanks 
Because the vast majority of ports have a holding period much longer as 5 days, a short delay at calculating the most popular P123 stocks can not prevent, that visitors from outside of P123 buy these stocks and affect the real money outcome of P123 members. I am not convinced that this is a win/win situation overall: non-members buy stocks from the list and sell them when they go down, before port rules recommend to sell.
This can be a disadvantage especially for low-liquidity ports, which seem to be most popular with P123 members. Therefore I opt out.
How about showing instead a performance statistic (out-of-sample only) of P123 Port results, for public, R2Gs and, because of me, also for private ports, compared with the SP500 performance? This would be more helpful for non-member visitors.
By the way: Where has the link / search site for public ports, sims and screens of all members gone?
Matthias
And non-members get the most popular (and best performing?) stocks of member-ports (with a short delay) for free (and without of working for it)… 
We very much appreciate that sentiment. And although it may not influence anybody in terms of how they feel about this feature, I do want to expand on our motivation.
The first time Marco showed me this feature, I hated it, as I do all such popular-stock lists. But on reflection of what this was in terms of our site, I saw it as a good thing. And for that reason, changed my mind and supported it. And later on, I proposed the addition of the link “Why you should care” (which you only see if you are not logged in) and I wrote the text one gets upon clicking. In case you haven’t seen it, here it is:
The typical most-popular lists are potential disasters waiting to happen
We’re not alone in believing this. Consider what Peter Lynch, the legendary former manager of Fidelity Magellan, had to say at the opening of Chapter 9 of One Up on Wall Street:
If I could avoid a single stock, it would be the hottest stock in the hottest industry, the one that gets the most favorable publicity, the one that every investor hears about in the car pool or on the commuter train — and succumbing to the social pressure, often buys.
Do you really think it’s to your benefit to see and click on tickers in a list like that?
Our most-popular list is completely different
Our list consists of stocks that appear most frequently in models created by our users based on screening and ranking. Some are well-known. Others are not. Either way, this is absolutely, positively the best way to find investment ideas based on at least some objective showing of merit and without regard to what news sources you consult, what tips your friends provide, etc.
Having the right stocks come to your attention is critical to investment performance. No matter how great you are at evaluating stock, you have no real chance to succeed if you always wind up applying your skills to stocks that aren’t really worthy of being examined in the first place. Expand your field of view with rule based investing. That’s what Peter Lynch did. That’s what Warren Buffet does. They, and other investment greats, pick stocks based on genuine investment merit.
Join us and do likewise! Invest in models created and maintained by our experienced users. Create your own models. Research the ideas you uncover through your own models or the models you follow.
That explains our motivation. We aren’t trying to front-run anybody (actually, as Marco pointed out, we’re doing the exact opposite; I suppose you could say we’re back trailing). What we’re trying to do is sell the approach to investing followed here. That’s a big job. It may not seem that way to you, because you already get it. Don’t underestimate how many don’t. Heck, there are even guys who got Nobel Prizes for arguing that what you do can’t be done. So we really do need to explain why we’re different from and better than the other guys.
You have a stake in our success here. Obviously, better marketing benefits Portfolio123. (As equity investors, you look for companies that are doing well. We’re a company too. We also want to do well.) Bear in mind, though, that through R2G, you’re not purely P123 customers. You are also actual or potential (if you so choose) partners. The more effectively we can sell the sort of model-based investing we do, the more effectively we can attract subscribers to R2G models create and maintained that way. So actually, if you encounter somebody who says to you: “Why should I come to R2g on Poirtfolio123? There’s Covestor, there’s Motif, etc. What’s so great about you folks?” consider how you’d respond. Our popular-tickers promo is part of an effort to coach the investing public to understand that we and YOU are better.
J3th says, “And non-members get the most popular (and best performing?) stocks of member-ports (with a short delay) for free (and without of working for it)…”
This is exactly why I like the new feature of displaying the 20 most-invested-in stocks in a box on the home page. P123 members are already invested in these stocks. That is why they are on the front page.
Now, curious non-members browse the site, see the stocks listed in the box, and after some research, decide to buy some of them. This puts upward pressure on the stocks in the box and the members who are invested in them will make more money than if there was no box on the front page.
I am happy to give non-members the names of the stocks I and other P123 members are invested in “for free”, so they can push the prices of our stocks up.
-Bob
Marc, Marco,
You could perhaps also add a backtest of how the list has done as well, or tracking how it does from now onwards, which would be hard to replicate due to the delay for a non users, but it would be a good selling point for future subscribers.
Bob, 100% agree with you, unfortunately many people do not seem to get even that! the people that have complained here about this list, seem to have done so because they see their picks there, and think that they are using some secret formula that nobody knows… well guess what, if your stocks are there, you are doing what everyone else is pretty much doing. Its not that your stocks are there, its that you are using the same moldels as everyone else, thats it.
Opting out, is not going to change the fact that you are using the same models, what you will be doing is blinding yourself by purposely ignoring this information.
What you don’t realize is that some people don’t like the feeling that they are being used as guinea pigs without their consent and unfortunately this feature makes me feel like one and I want the option to decline being part of this experiment.
Marc, I understand P123 is a business and wishes to market its product. Personally I was not thrilled with the direction P123 took when it decided to go into and push the R2G models but I recognize that it is P123’s prerogative as it is of the members who have chosen to be developers. If you want to take on the likes of Covestor I would suggest spinning off R2G from P123. From my perspective the requirement that one be a high level member to be an R2G developer is prohibitive and while you think P123 sells R2G I think beyond a certain point ironically enough it is the opposite.
As for the general public, there are people who will get it and there are those who will not. The number of lottery winners who ended up squandering their winnings is legion. As a long-time member who joined when this was still a fledgling service I can say I did so because I saw the potential of P123 allowing me to learn things on my own and that was back in the day when the forums were mainly posts by Marco, Denny and Dan, so I have seen this company grow. If I wanted a service that just produced a list of stocks this wouldn’t have been the service I would have subscribed to. Good thing I didn’t because a lot of those that existed back in the day don’t anymore or are pale shadows of their former selves.
I have no problem. I can’t possibly see how it hurts any user, as the list is stale. In fact, just the opposite as others have suggested. I would be very surprised if anyone mindlessly bought these stocks in any case.
You can now opt out of the ticker list feature.
See this post: [url=http://www.portfolio123.com/mvnforum/viewthread_thread,8560]http://www.portfolio123.com/mvnforum/viewthread_thread,8560[/url]
I know there have been some bugs but overall I like the new layout better. It seems to work better on both my iPad as well as on my desktop using FireFox (IE seems to have issues, though, like the one Steve Auger pointed out). I don’t use the pop up navigation bar on the left because it disappears all the time and creates more mouse clicks. I use the breadcrumb at the top to navigate back to my ports/sims directory. But overall, I like it. Seems snappier too.
Thank you for being sensitive to this issue and continuing to be responsive to feedback. Regarding the new site look I haven’t seen any abnormalities yet but will report any I do find.
Kumar,
you may be right with the smalles of smallcaps and microcaps.
It is my experience that liquidity is not a problem, even on Monday, if you refrain from trading those.
I like smallcaps but do not trade any that have less than 1 Mill. liquidity (daily) minimum. That rule will generally keep me out of liquidity problems (and I don’t trade at the Open).
Hi Marco and team
Due to the heavy discussions around the “popular stocks” issue, my topic has been overlooked. Usability remains crucial for success of P123.
– PLEASE HELP –
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My sidebars with the live portfolio folders keep on hiding so I have to open them first to chose the next live port for rebalancing. Once I rebalance, the sidebar is gone again and it is cumbersome to switch between ports.
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Also, if my ports have long names, the side bar takes up almost half of my screen. This could be optimized by line wrapping long names.
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I suggest P123 adds a functionality where I can select multiple ports and then rebalance all at once. I am running >30 live ports, and I need to rebalance them first, before I rebalance my >5 live books.
Thank you so much,
whotookmnickname