• Silicon Investor has boards for discussing primarily technology stocks.
• The Motley Fool has moderated boards for individual stocks and other topics.
• Raging Bull is a fast growing discussion site.
• Mutual Funds Interactive's Newsgroup is moderated and commonly includes some high level discussions with some well known mutual fund industry participants.
• Investorville is a recently opened discussion site.
• Investing forums take off from CNNfn (1/8/98)
• Internet Communities - Business Week's cover story on May 5, 1997 includes a number of articles about chat rooms and related internet subjects.
• Is the net redefining our identity - Business Week (5/12/97).

Investor Home does not encourage the use of unmoderated chat for investment purposes. There are some chat rooms and bulletin boards that are focused on specific topics and can be useful for asking focused questions. Because the world wide web offers access to so many respected and qualified sources, seeking advice from unqualified or questionable sources (at the vast majority of chat sites and bulletin boards) is likely to be comparatively unproductive. If you do make use of chat or bulletin boards, as with any source of investment advice, you should evaluate the credibility of the source of information and act accordingly. And beware of the all to common Investment Pornography.

Investor Home does not have any immediate plans to offer bulletin boards or chat on the site, but may consider offering a function in the future. In that event, its likely that it will be during specific scheduled time periods and feature respected individuals in the investment business. While chat and bulletin boards can be entertaining, occasionally interesting, and can be a good place to meet people with similar interests, their value in selecting securities is questionable. See the The Efficient Market Hypothesis for more on this topic.

Never make an investment decision based solely upon what you read on-line. Even if motives are honest, there are no guarantees that the information is accurate or the advice is sound. The real-time nature of the Internet, combined with its growing base of users, makes it a prime target for stock touting and bashing. Be wary of the gossip and unsubstantiated rumors that often infest these on-line sites.
Possibilities & Pitfalls: The Internet as an Investment Tool, NASDR

Reading information from message boards is no substitute for independent research, and it's a bad idea to trade or make any investment decisions based on message boards. Never assume people are who they say they are, know what they say they know, or are affiliated with whom they say they are affiliated. This service is for entertainment only.

Reminder: About the Business & Finance Message Boards, a recently posted disclaimer on Yahoo's Message Boards

"Chat rooms for instance are often appallingly juvenile even hostile places, where you're as likely to be insulted as you are to be enlightened."
Internet Communities, Business Week (5/5/97)

All it takes to post to one of the 20,000 or so newsgroups is a net connection and a suppressed capacity for embarrassment. What was once a moderately reliable, if somewhat eccentric, place to exchange information about topics of common interest has devolved into a swamp of rants and pseudo-data.
Dan Rosenbaum, NetGuide magazine (August 1996)

For every 10 bytes of value online there seems to be 10,000 bytes of drivel.
Walter Mossberg