Investors Hub message board review

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Investors Hub, or iHub as it is often known among the ‘cooler crowds’ is one of the leading message boards for investors online. However, just because it is ‘leading’, it does not necessarily mean that it is any good. In fact, I genuinely do not think that Investors Hub is worth your time.

What is Investors Hub?

At its heart, Investors Hub is a message board. In fact, The largest message board online. There are close to 150 million posts on the site with a shade under 700,000 users posting them. There are other features to Investors Hub, which I will come to later on, but for the most part, just think of it as a huge message board.

Investors hub
Picture Source: learn.advfn.com

Investors Hub is owned by ADVFN, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange. If you are interested in stock trading, then you will probably have gone to the ADVFN website in the past. It is, essentially, just a huge stock ticker. Everybody seems to use it.

This does mean that Investors Hub is not a privately-owned site, which does come with its own issues. However, I probably would have been a lot more concerned if the site was owned by some random company who were using it to manipulate stock prices.

Since ADVFN solely deals with stock tickers and the like, it makes sense that they would have a site like Investors Hub under their belts. It goes well with their product portfolio.

The Registration Process

I do not tend to talk about the registration process in my reviews, but I really feel a need to in this Investors Hub message board review, simply because of something that really irked me.

When you register on the site, your password will appear in the little text box in plain text. Got somebody looking over your shoulder when you whack it in? Fantastic! Your password will have just been stolen.

This is just something so basic, and when you have a multi-million company behind Investors Hub, you would have thought that they could have paid somebody to tinker with the HTML a little bit to hide the password.

iHub Registeration page
Picture Source: investorshub.advfn.com

I know that it is probably not the case, but I am finding it very difficult to believe that Investors Hub have not stored my password in plain text in their database. It is simple stuff like this which gets annoying; just deal with the basics, people.

The second you have finished registering for Investors Hub, you are going to be hit with those ads. You will be greeted with a list of maybe twenty different mailing lists that you can register for.

These are (mostly) mailing lists for some big investment companies, and a few companies dealing with precious metals. The idea is that you will get a message sent to you whenever they are looking to make an investment, or maybe some deposit of precious metals has been discovered.

However, honestly, I do not place much value in mailing lists like this. They are just way too generic for my tastes, and you can only imagine the number of issues that end up occurring when you have hundreds of thousands of people receiving the same email. Suffice to say that you will probably not find a good deal here.

That is not all about the registration process. Your account will still need approval before you can really interact properly with the message boards. This normally takes a day or two. You have to typically learn patience while registering for Investors Hub.

How the message board works

The message board is surprisingly useful. Well, the content is not that brilliant (more on that in a short while), but the site has been laid out pretty well for those who are looking for specific content.

When you load up the message board, you will be greeted with, maybe, one hundred different categories. Each of these categories will cover a specific niche e.g. ‘food’.

Click the category you are interested in, and you will find individual message boards for each company that trades on the stock market in that niche. Each of these will have hundreds, if not thousands of threads that you can browse through, dedicated to that specific company.

mailing list
Picture Source: https://investorshub.advfn.com

 

I must say, I do genuinely like the way that they have done things here. You have your general message boards for when you are looking for general advice, but the fact that you can hop on over to Investors Hub and get advice on specific companies is actually pretty fabulous.

Not many investor-centric message boards do this. It does pose some issues, which I will talk about soon, but it is a nice idea.

The layout of the message boards

stock market message board
Picture Source: www.investorshub.advfn.com

Investors Hub does have its problems, and I am going to talk about those in a lot of depth on this page, but the basic layout of the message boards is not an issue. It tends to be pretty simple to find whatever company you want on the site. It is incredibly simple to read the boards too. However, you will run into problems.

For the next few sections, I am hand picking a random company from the list. If you are reading this review, then you can find the same company. Follow these steps:

  • Find the US Listed category
  • Hit Media – Conglomerates
  • Choose SNM Global Holdings

You with me? Fantastic. If you are over on Investors Hub right now, I will give you a few minutes to scroll past the billion ads at the top of the page. At the time of writing, there is even an advert for donuts. I have absolutely no idea why there is an ad for donuts on iHub, but there is.

The problem is that each individual message board functions independently. As far as I know; the people who control that particular message board have full control over what they stick at the top of the page.

They can put ads there. They can put warnings. They can put whatever. I have since clicked further categories, and few of them are as bad as the SNM Global Holdings page is, but they are still pretty bad.

There is no reason why users should have this much control over each category. It feels as if the company behind Investors Hub have decided to put the site in the hands of people so they can do as little work as feasibly possible and still collect money at the end of the day.

User-Generated Content

Let’s go back to the example I gave just then. The thread titles are likely to change should you go to Investors Hub now, so I will give you an example of the useful content that appears on this particular message board:

  • SNMN – Troy has been replaced as CEO?
  • No reverse split happening here
  • SNMN – What’s up with today’s volume?

Seems good, right? Topics that are rife for discussion. People can work out whether this is a good stock pick or not, which is something that I really, really like to see on a site. But, these are the only three ‘decent’ threads I could pick out from the first page. Here are the others that appear:

  • Troy says hi to all the suckers lol..
  • Hahahahahaha!
  • LMAO love the pic…..
  • LMAO. I hope you all dumped that carrot.
User-generated content
Picture Source: www.investorshub.advfn.com

From what I can tell, this company is a scam company. They encouraged people to invest and nothing happened. You don’t really need the details, because it does not matter. I am just pointing out that the content that you find on Investors Hub is incredibly immature.

It is not written by proper stock investors or anything like that. It is like browsing Reddit, but you do not get the upvotes and downvotes to ensure that the decent contents are shown and the terrible contents are hidden.

Even when you click through to the actual thread, the content is terrible. There is nothing there; it is mostly immature conversation which is not getting anybody anywhere…and that is if you get a reply at all.

There will be some amazing content mixed throughout Investors Hub. I am sure people have found a useful tidbit of information that they have clawed onto and made a profit from. However, to be honest with you, I would not want to put in the time to actually find the information there.

I have better things to do when it comes to stock investing than looking at random ‘hilarious’ pictures that somebody decided to share.

Remember, if you want to post more than 15 times per day on the message boards, you will pay for the privilege too. Who wants to spend a decent chunk of change each month to engage in mindless discussions like this?

There are more than message boards here…

While the message boards are the main focus for Investors Hub, there is a bit more going on here.

For starters, you have various news articles related to the stock market. All of these are free to access. However, do bear in mind it is nothing more than a wire service. None of this information is unique.

They are just links to other websites, mostly the Wall Street Journal. I am not exactly sure how ‘curated’ these news articles are, but you can bet your bottom dollar that Investors Hub is only allowing you to see what they want you to see. Obviously, this is not a ‘selling point’ for me, because this information is available elsewhere.

The company regularly releases press releases for companies that want to talk about changes they have. However, guess what? This is the most curated content of all. If you want to release news to Investors Hub that does not appear on any of the major sites, then you will pay $200 for it.

This is probably not going to matter to you since you are an investor. However, this goes to show just how ‘odd’ the content set-up is. Investors Hub is only sharing information from companies that want to pay them.

You have various stock tickers on the site, which most people would normally find useful. The problem? Well, if you want them to be live stock tickers, then you are going to need to pay for that to happen. There are sites which offer actual live stock tickers for free. Baffling!

You can do a little bit more on Investors Hub than just see it as a stock ticker. You can manipulate the charts to show you the data in a way you want, and I must admit their charts are some of the most ‘interactive’ I have seen, with oodles of data available. However, I am still really reluctant to say that it is worth the cost because it is not.

Pricing

I am a little bit reluctant to discuss the pricing structure behind Investors Hub, simply because I do not recommend that anybody parts with their cash to fund this site. There are better options out there which do not overload you with ads.

Pricing starts at $15 per month, and there are various ‘levels’. All will make your site experience ‘ad free’, although by ‘ad free’, they do not mean getting rid of the user-generated ads on the site. You get to keep those ones! (which, instantly makes the price not worth it).

Pricing leves
Picture Source: investorshub.advfn.com

Essentially, all you are getting for your money is:

  • Ad-free experience (but not really)
  • Live stock tickers
  • The ability to post more on the message boards.

That is it. Well, you get some analysis charts that you can browse through, but there is nothing that is really that unique. Sure, the minimum price of $15 is not exactly going to break the bank, but why spend it?

Honestly, you are best off browsing some other sites online, such as Tim Sykes’ site. You are going to be paying a little more for a service like his, but at least the information that you are getting will be carefully curated, and you will even get some instructional videos to help you on your merry way. You are not getting that with Investors Hub. You are getting a mish-mash of information that you probably will not know how to use.

Appalling layout

For me, the layout of Investors Hub is one of the worst things about it. It simply looks hideous. It looks like it has been whipped right out of the 90s, and the design is just a little bit of a step-up from a GeoCities site.

Granted, all the information that you need to know is actually there. The site just does not go the right way about doing things. Would have been fantastic if the company who owns Investors Hub had taken some of the money they had earned and invested it in the website.

That being said, I am going to give Investors Hub the benefit of the doubt here. I know that there are a lot of people who are not massive fans of change. When they get used to the way a site works, they do not want to boot it up the next time and find that everything has moved about. If it ain’t broke, and Investors Hub really is not broke, then there is no sense in fixing it.

I have already spoken a little bit about the message board layout earlier, but I do want to mention it again; that is also exceedingly terrible.

Sponsored Ads

This also really gets me annoyed. There should not be sponsored ads on an investor message board. The only exception I am willing to make to this rule is if the product is owned by the company who runs the message board. Sites do need to make money, after all.

sponsored content
Picture Source: investorshub.advfn.com

However, I am not a fan of it on Investors Hub at all. Since the site mostly deals with penny stocks, prices can be changed rather rapidly when you have thousands of people jumping on them at once.

This means you can’t help but get the feeling that the sponsored ad kicking about on the site taking up that precious real estate can have an influence on stock prices. In fact, there is a chance that Investors Hub may be deliberately pushing something like a ‘good’ product because it makes wonderful predictions. Many people forget that there are a lot of people on Investors Hub, which can make stock pumping pretty simple.

Pumping

stock graph

Since there are hundreds of thousands of ‘investors’ on Investors Hub, prices are very, very prone to pumping. Threads are often read by hundreds of people within a few minutes. This means that, in some cases, you may find some person who just wants to make a little bit of cash starts a discussion saying that it is a good option. Loads of people end up trusting this person, which means they buy into the stock, and the price starts to rise.

There is little to no way in which this can be combatted. Sure, you will likely find stock pumping on some of the more private investor discussion boards out there, but because there are so many people on Investors Hub, it is more prone to it than any other site.

Since the majority of people who are using the site no doubt do not have a clue about investing, then there will be a lot of inaccurate messages which lead to pumping too, which causes even greater losses.

As I said; there is a lot of good information that can be found on Investors Hub, but I wouldn’t want to sort through the tons and tons of poor quality stuff, particularly since a good number of the posts are just clear stock pumps.

Who is Investors Hub for?

Don’t get me wrong. There is a lot of information packed onto the Investors Hub website. You are going to need to sift through a whole lot of rubbish in order to get there, but there is good stuff which could help you. Since it is free to sign up, I imagine that a lot of people who are just getting started in stock investing will benefit to a certain degree.

The problem is that if you solely rely on Investors Hub for the message boards, then you will not get a lot out of it. You will graduate pretty quickly beyond the basics. Everybody is out for themselves on Investors Hub, and this means that unless you are looking for just generic information, you won’t find much here. I certainly would not use it for stock tips.

Check it out by all means, but do not subscribe to the premium options. It is a waste of cash. There are a lot of products out there which do the same thing, albeit in a slightly better way. Take Tim Sykes, for instance. Fantastic at what he does. His system will cost money, but since the information there is a bit more ‘vetted’, you can rely on it to be more accurate.

Is it worth checking out?

I was not overly negative in this Investors Hub message board review without good reason. This site is not a good site, this is my genuine thought about it. The posters that kick around on Investors Hub tend to disappear pretty quickly, no doubt because they have discovered fresher pastures.

I have no doubt that you are going to get something out of Investors Hub during the early stages of your investing career. The message boards can be useful like that. However, this is absolutely not a site that you are going to want to spend any cash on. It is likely going to be one of the worst investments you can make. Well, the second worst investment you can make. Some of the tips you find on Investors Hub are easily going to be the worst.

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Hi I'm Paul Koger, an ex-Prop Trader now trading from the comfort of my own home. My area of expertise is swing trading US equities, Although I have a strong interest in anything that is trading related. In case you want to get in touch - try Twitter @paulkogr or traderpaulkoger@gmail.com

1 COMMENT

  1. One of the best helpful post to understand about Investors Hub. It is good to understand better how to invest before investing your money to overcome bad trading practice. thanks, Paul for sharing the honest and valuable review.

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