Stock promoters have a new way to play the new media game. In the past year or so, several finance websites -- including Forbes.com, Seeking Alpha, Wall St. Cheat Sheet, and others -- have published articles by authors who were allegedly paid to promote the stocks they were writing about. These articles were not labeled as advertisements and carried no disclosures that the authors had been compensated by their subjects.

In fact, on at least one of the websites -- stock blog Seeking Alpha -- the articles carried a disclosure stating the author had not received any compensation from anyone outside of Seeking Alpha to write the article. Seeking Alpha now admits that some of those disclosures were inaccurate.

 

Eoin Treacy's view

As online marketing becomes progressively more sophisticated, with sites designed so that it is often difficult to ascertain who wrote what, it is becoming increasingly important to recognise the source of one’s information. At Fuller Treacy Money you know exactly who is writing the commentary, what we think, what we are doing with our own money and how we view risks and opportunities from a trading and investment perspective. We leave it up to you to make up your own mind. Our theme remains “Empowerment Through Knowledge”