Opion Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Opion - Case Study Example This case deals with how the company deals effectively with providing a service that is accurate and more than what the competition is offering. It is not very easy to give a verdict about a particular stock following its speculation in the market and people's perception but this is exactly what Opion set out to do in 2001 despite competition from the likes of a Vancouver based MindfulEye (www.mindfuleye.com) which provided a Moodscore for several stocks and Stockscores (www.stockscores.com) which provided clients with actual stock analysis based on technical grounds. Stockscores was actually superfluous because it did not provide analysis based on verbal speculation but Mindfuleye was more of a competition although none of these were considered actual competitors of Opion. Opion was a different ball game altogether. Its major product was Opion Financial Pro 1.0 which calculated hourly buzz scores on three major indices namely the Standard and Poor's 500, the NASDAQ 100 and the Dow Jones 30 Industrial Average. The basic work of Financial Pro 1.0 was to gauge fluctuations in stock values and help portfolio managers become better decision makers by analyzing how investors perceive a particular stock. Later, traditional methods were used to analyze the stock on more technical grounds. One of the major disadvantages of using such a method is inaccuracy. ... Hence Opion took three measures that advised a conjecture about a stock to be negative or positive. Relevance was of the utmost importance as trying to determine whether a particular posting is pertinent to the topic being discussed is of very high significance. Credibility came next as anyone can register on a forum and start discussions about something they may or may not know much about. So determining people who were actually familiar with the stock market lingo and characteristics was a challenge but a necessary one at that. Lastly, came influence. Any messaging or posts in a discussion forum are subject to influence from other people or even generally what is written in the forums. Influence gives wind to rumors and rumors blight credibility dramatically. These were some challenges that Opion had to face, which other companies may not have taken into consideration. Buzz scores, however may not be too accurate when looked at from a certain point of view. The case explains that there was high variance from day to day and stock to stock. While day-to-day variance may be taken into account and dealt with considering fluctuation volumes, stock-to-stock variance gave heed to inaccuracies. New economy stocks like Microsoft and Cisco obviously generate more talk and interest than old economy stocks due to the perception that these are essentially more profitable. Actually, this may not necessarily be the case. The major reason a new economy stock will be seen more optimistically is the fact that more people are talking about it and there is more speculation as to the trading of this stock. Old economy stocks may not be favorites here despite their market moving and index weight abilities. Hence, Opion was prone to get