Well, as a self-proclaimed avoider of stocks, I still enjoy contributing to our discussion and analysis of stock pick services. I’m still sorting out a problem in getting my Daytraders.com trial started but, hopefully, I’ll have something to report soon. In the meantime, I want to bring light to another service that looks very interesting: WhisperNumber Risk Sentiment Reports. These reports, updated weekly, provide a model portfolio with unambiguous entry/exit signals. So those are two pluses in that it isn’t a daytrading system with lots of market watching and commission expenses and the calls are not fuzzy. The theory behind it is appealing also. Here is what they say:

The concept is simple – present favorable stocks with low sentiment risk and improving technicals and heavy short interest. Conversely, present unfavorable stocks with high sentiment risk and low short interest and technicals that are long in the tooth.

Basically, it is contrarian in nature. The Whisper Number, used to measure sentiment, are the earnings estimates of investors, the people actually buying and selling the stocks, as opposed to analysts. While stocks beat analyst estimates nearly 87% of the time, they only beat investor expectations about 56% of the time so they act as a more difficult hurdle to clear. Ever wonder why certain stocks go down when when matching or beating analyst estimates? Well, it could be because they didn’t meet investor expectations, the “whisperings” on Wall Street (thus the name). The theory is markets respond not to estimates, an abstract concept, but expectations, a real measure of investor sentiment. Where they get these numbers is, I guess, their secret but probably involves lots of surveying.

Also, the price is right, relatively speaking, for these reports at only $12.95 per month, a far cry from the $30-40 range of the other services we’ve mentioned. They don’t offer a free trial or track record (humph!) but do offer a risk-free trial so it might be worth toying with.