Thursday, May 05, 2005

Do you read Corporate Message Boards?

Here is a link to a Merck message board at Yahoo.com. I read the board every morning after reading the Yahoo news page devoted to Merck. Mostly it is to read what potential, current (or alleged) investors are writing. When legal troubles such as Vioxx appear, you can bet that there will almost always be a daily diatribe on the legal issue of a company.

Does this help? Sometimes. While the posts are mostly of limited value, a quick scan may reveal some tidbit of information. In one instance a Wyeth message board had a post on a jury verdict involving a Fen Phen case. The verdict had been announced only moments before, and I just happened to find out while scanning the page. It did not make wire services until about 45 minutes later.

It's worth a look if only for five minutes if you are battling a publicly traded company.