Chat Will Be On Monday Night NOT Sunday Night

The best thing we can do in our chat next Monday night is review the numerous day trades (both winners and losers) that TraderMike bragged about yesterday. ;-) I know folks are thirsty for up-to-date Dummy Lessons, so we'll talk about day trading exclusively next Monday. Join me at 8PM in the chat to discuss how to trade with trend, find low-risk spots to enter, and manage open positions. Everyone's welcome and it's free!

Reading Roundup (X)

Articles I've recently read with my comments in italics, and other miscellany:

Forget It, Jake. It's Sun Valley
[I laughed at this despite myself. Rupert's third wife, Wendi Deng, is Chinese (and 37 years younger than he is). Their daughter, Grace Helen, was born in 2001 -- talk about winning the ovarian lottery!]

By Friday there's nothing of note to read on the Net, so I have nothing else to link to... you become aware of the news cycle pretty quickly when you start blogging.

Interesting Facts about eSignal

Excerpts from the IDC's 10-K for the period ending December 31, 2004:

• "eSignal accounted for $55.1 million, or 11.4%, of our service revenue in 2004."
• "Through the eSignal business, our Active Trader Services segment has historically experienced lower renewal rates {than the 95% annual renewal rates enjoyed by the Institutional Services segment}." [Unwilling to disclose annual renewal rates for eSignal, hrm.]
• "... information is delivered via eSignal's internally engineered and operated network with advanced IP multicast backbone and multiple, geographically dispersed server farms." [As opposed to a backward unicast fishbone... I love techie jargon.]
• "As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2004, eSignal had over 43,700 direct subscription terminals, which included approximately 6,500 FutureSource terminals."
• "Within our Active Trader Services segment of our business, eSignal competes against numerous competitors including Townsend Analytics, Thomson Financial, TradeStation, DTN Market Access, Inc., CQG, Inc. and others." [Competes against numerous competitors, lol. No specific mention of Quote.com, hrm]
• "On September 1, 2004, we acquired the assets of FutureSource, a privately held provider of real-time futures, commodities and foreign exchange markets data. This acquisition enables us to provide global coverage of futures and commodities data. The price paid in cash for the assets was $18,000,000, offset by cash acquired of $317,000." [So they paid around $2,720 for each existing FutureSource subscriber?]
• "Subscriptions for eSignal's array of Internet-based services continued to grow through both direct and indirect sales distribution channels. [See table below] The eSignal business is primarily dependent on growth in online trading accounts among active investors."

• "Within the Active Trader Services segment, service revenue for the eSignal business grew by $1,258,000, or 2.9%, from $44,020,000 in 2002 to $45,278,000 in 2003, which included a 58.6% or $2,626,000 decline in the broadcast business from $4,478,000 in 2002 to $1,852,000 in 2003. Underlying service revenue for the Internet-delivered services, other than broadcast, increased by $3,884,000 due to the number of direct subscribers increasing by 12.7% in the year to approximately 32,000, partially offset by lower average net subscription fees." [So they went from around 32,000 subscribers in 2003 to around 37,000 in 2004 (not including the new FutureSource subscribers)... to be precise, "... subscribers which grew from 31,851 in 2003 to 37,157 in 2004, an increase of 5,306, or 16.7%."... impressive... I'll have to track down the subscriber numbers as the bubble built then burst, those would be really interesting.]

"As of December 31, 2003, eSignal had over 52,000 subscribers ... The number of eSignal subscribers grew by 44% in 2003 to just over 52,000." -- Period ending Dec. 31, 2003 10-K [Huh? I thought it was 32,000 at the end of 2003??]

Their reporting of subscriber numbers is very spotty over the last decade... annoying.

OK, here are some old subscriber numbers for
Signal/SignalCard - June 30, 1994: 10,620 | June 30, 1995: 13,020 | June 30, 1996: 14,093.
for Quotrek - June 30, 1994: 8,330 | June 30, 1995: 8,940 | June 30, 1996: 10,584.
for BMI - June 30, 1994: 5,550 | June 30, 1995: 6,860 | June 30, 1996: 8,814.

From the fiscal year ended June 30, 1996 10-K: "The Company estimates its Signal product has the largest share (approximately 50%) of the real-time non-professional investor market compared to its principal competitors. The Company estimates that BMI has approximately 20% of the market ... The Company believes its QuoTrek product dominates the hand-held, wireless market for real-time financial market data with an estimated 75% market share."