Thanks again to our community for your thoughtful insight and to our developers for putting together the details. We are continually updating and tweaking the site while we are in our beta. Highlights from the latest release include the following:

1) Visibility settings. We added the capability to mark a post as Public or Private. This feature is the first step in creating your own personal ‘trade journal’. Post your notes and thoughts as private and only you can find them. We think it makes sense to have all of your trading information in one spot. In the future, this feature will permit you to print a transcript of your trades with official date and time stamps. Say you are a trader looking for a career change, simply print off your private posts and show actual trade detail. It means alot more to have notes attached to trades to better understand your thought process than to simply show a spreadsheet with ’sample trades’. More to come on this topic in the near future.

2) Twitter posts now include an indicator if the Tweet is about a ‘new’ topic’ or a reply to an existing topic.

3) Check out the new Awards page. We added a button to view current awards and previous winners. This will be updated periodically.

4) Connect. Check out the connect page of the user profile and populate your posts from other social communities to your Financial Kudos posts. Also FaceBook Connect is available so that your posts can be automatically added to your FaceBook home page.

5) Misc. typos, tweaks and such. There are small subtle enhancements in many places – we really appreciate our team of beta users – it is helpful to have such a committed group to find our typos!

6) New Landing Pages – When your friends find us on Twitter or FaceBook they can learn more about our community. We have included a few screen shots as well. Take a look and tell us what you think! Landing Page

We will continue to make changes before we emerge from our beta. Please keep the feedback coming! Send us an email to support@financialkudos.com or use the ‘Feedback’ button on the middle of the left margin of every page.

Perspective is a great equalizer. The New York Times ran an article this morning titled “Is the market Up 29 Percent or Down 40% percent?”. We think this piece is an important read. It briefly discusses benchmakrs but more importantly makes you think about the long tail of market moves and impact on portfolios.

As they say ‘timing is everything’ and this article made me think about investors timing, the big picture for the markets and putting things into perspective.

Just when you thought Wall Street was going to undergo a major transformation and reform, the Obama administration has created an opportunity to profit. It was only a question of time before the investment bankers stood up, shook off the dirt and began to think of the next vehicle for success. I actually think trading these credits makes sense and why shouldn’t Wall Street get a shot in the arm? Isn’t that good for the economy – in particular the New York Metropolitan area?

Carbon Credit Trading will not replace the gains from the mortgage debacle, but it is a sign that Wall Street bankers are beginning to surface. After all, once TARP funds are paid back, bonuses will be back in vogue.

The following article tells the story well. http://bit.ly/13CZdW

Daisy Maxey from The Wall Street Journal wrote and article about Finra’s warning about the risks involved with leveraged funds – particularly ETF funds. It appears that some investors are not completely familiar with the risks involved with the investments and certainly should have a more complete picture.

We believe that The Financial Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is taking the right approach by reminding brokers and registered investment advisers about the fiduciary responsibilities when offering or suggesting investments in ETFs and funds that offer leverage. While we are not suggesting that these funds shouldn’t be purchased, investors should understand the risk/reward scenarios when investing a portion of their assets and in accordance with their specific circumstances.

We would suggest a review of your portfolio with your financial advisers. For the do-it-yourself investor check with the funds and look through the prospectus to more fully understand the risks involved.

The complete article from the Journal can be found here: http://bit.ly/Rc3TF

TraderJoe posted about insider buying at eTrade group this morning.  Apparently two insiders were responsible for the purchase of over $100,000,000 in stock.  As the post said – that’s a lot of stock.  Over the years I have tried to keep an eye on the insiders.  There are many reasons why insiders sell stock – diversification, cash needs, children’s education, a home purchase etc. But there is only one reason why insiders buy stock in quantity – because they think it is going higher.  On the heels of the introduction of the iPhone app the transaction makes sense.

Obviously, all of us at Financial Kudos embrace new apps like the new eTrade apps since they help in democratizing the markets and increase the need for more information, better information and information delivered quicker (like our Twitter alerts) to a larger audience.

Thank you for your ideas and comments!  The development team has been hard at work making modifications to the platform to fix some bugs and refine functionality.  In the latest release we have modified the following:

1) Updated FAQs.
2) Worked on the RSS feeds and added a full page RSS view.
3) Fixed bugs related to post titles
4) Changed poll colors to be more easily identifiable
5) Updated the Financial Kudos Blog and added new features.
6) Added Bullish, Bearish and Neutral indication to replies
7) Added Instructions to posting pages

We are making progress.  Please continue to use the feedback button on the left and add ideas and feedback.

It’s hard not to here about all of those great apps available for the iPhone. Just last week my son wanted to learn a new song for his guitar. Of course neither of us could remember the name. I found myself saying ‘there’s an app for that’ just the like the commercials. We used the Shazam app and there it was.

With the new 3.0 software, a lower price point and a new hardware model I think a lot more people are going to say the same thing. Well, this blog is about trading, investing and a community so let’s focus on the new eTrade iPhone application. As Steve Jobs would say: ‘it’s gorgeous’. The application allows you to keep track of your portfolio and trade like a star from the comforts of wherever you might be.

Louisgray.com shows some great photos and describes the app completely. Or you can go to eTrade and learn all about it. I think eTrade will gain market share with the investment in the iPhone. With wifi coming to the airlines (a blog for another day), you will be able to easily trade from anywhere .

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – June 9, 2009) – For years, investors searching for tips and
information online have contended with messy message boards or restrictive
character limits. Finally, there is a place to find quick, easy and
relevant information about financial markets. Today,
www.FinancialKudos.com, the first online community for investors where
members can share, invest and earn rewards, announced its private beta
launch. Prospective users are invited to visit www.FinancialKudos.com to
request membership and learn more about the new incentive-driven community
designed to reward members for their participation and contributions.

"We're pleased to announce the private beta launch of FinancialKudos.com,
the first investor community that rewards its members for the quality of
their participation," said Larry Margolis, Founder and CEO of Financial
Kudos. "For the first time, online investors will have the opportunity to
win awards and earn recognition from their peers for providing actionable
investment ideas."

FinancialKudos.com invites users to reward one another for posting key
trading information and sharing relevant investor tips by gifting "Kudos"
points to reflect their appreciation for a good scoop or concept. At the
end of each month, the members with highest number of Kudos earned and most
notable community contributions will be awarded prizes including a portion
of the membership revenue.

FinancialKudos.com offers a robust new interactive community for investors
with key elements including:

-- Alerts sent to members to provide real-time updates on posts or
investor information on FinancialKudos.com through Twitter and Facebook
-- Simple three-step process for creating new posts not limited to 140
characters and commenting on existing threads with multimedia component
that allows posting of charts, videos and photographs
-- Easy-to-access database searchable by company name, stock symbol, news
topic or recent trend
-- Leaderboard updated in real time to reflect most active and
influential community members

FinancialKudos.com will scale from private beta launch to full national
launch in the coming weeks, and invites interested parties to learn more at
www.FinancialKudos.com and on Twitter @financialkudos.

About FinancialKudos.com

FinancialKudos.com is the only online financial social network that rewards
members for participating in and contributing to the community with a
portion of its membership revenue. Headquartered in New York City,
FinancialKudos.com is the go-to online community for novice investors,
seasoned professionals and everyone in between, and invites members to
showcase their expertise to earn Kudos from their peers while gaining
insight into tips and trends from one another. To learn more, please visit
www.FinancialKudos.com or follow us on Twitter @financialkudos.

It seems like the first post on this blog was a lifetime ago. We launched this blog on 3/13/2009 with the idea that we wanted to get insight into features and needs for our future membership group.  We thank you for your inspiration and ideas.  We have added many great ideas to the site and are pleased to announce that beginning tomorrow morning 6/9/2009 you can request an invitation to join our private beta.

Please follow @financialkudos on Twitter to see new posts and use the FaceBook connect feature to add your posts to your FaceBook wall.

We are in the process of putting the finishing touches on the beta release of the Financial Kudos community and we would like to show it off to a few users for a short 'alpha release'.