Goodbye, Seeking Alpha!

I started writing for Seeking Alpha in early 2007. I have always appreciated the organization, but I am extremely dissatisfied with the way an issue was handled, and I am walking away from contributing any more articles.

What Happened

I posted about a problem to X and to LinkedIn on July 7th. Here is what I said on X:

On LinkedIn, my message tagged David Jackson, and it did capture his attention:

Here we are, almost three weeks later, and this problem is not at all resolved, and I want to share it here.

The article was entitled Bassett: Not A Cheap Dog But A Cheap Stock, and published before the market opened on June 22nd. The link now leads to a page that says this:

There was a material error. Who found it? Me! When? On July 5th, when I had a follow-up article that I submitted. This was the feedback on that article, which was rejected, at the end of the day on July 6th at 4:20 CT:

The bulk of the rejection quotes from my rejected article. Indeed, I did make an error, as I explained, in figuring out my target when I initiated coverage. The two errors were rather simple: I counted operating leases as debt, though this is what many people do, and I failed to count short-term investments as cash. The result of these two errors is that my original target was in fact too low. The stock was at $15.62 when I published the article in June, and my target for year-end was $17.65 for year-end.

The stock went up a lot from when it was published to when it was rejected:

I wanted to share an update for anyone who might have read the initial piece, which was not very many! According to Seeking Alpha, that piece had just 146 readers. Here is the removed article:

Bassett Article Removed.pdf

Download PDF • 404KB

Here is the follow-up, which was rejected:

Bassett Article Rejected.pdf

Download PDF • 360KB

My point in posting this article here is not to discuss the stock, though I am certainly willing to answer any questions anyone reading this might have. Had I not made my initial errors, I would not have rated it Buy but rather Strong Buy. My point is to have my readers understand why I am no longer going to write at Seeking Alpha.

The Big Issues

That they unposted my article is not the largest concern to me. While I am not happy that they did this, I am most unhappy with how it was handled. When I got the email with that rejection notice in it, I immediately hit "reply" to address it. Here is what I said:

And Seeking Alpha can think about saying goodbye to me. 

The response? None. Ever.

I have had some interaction with that editor over the last year and a half. I don't know much about him, but he was a former writer. He appears to have become an editor in 2017. He is serving now as PRO Managing Editor, according to his page at Seeking Alpha. SA Pro is a service that costs subscribers $2400 per year.

I like that he was a contributor and that he holds the CFA Charter. I don't like that I can't find a lot of information about him.

I wanted to speak with Seeking Alpha Founder and CEO David Jackson, and my LI post, with his name linked, did work. He messaged me that morning, and he wanted to understand better. I responded to his private message:

I didn't hear back from him, and I sent him a message on July 9th. He responded on July 10th and handed it off to an editor in India. I reached out to this person by email, and he ended up handing it off to an editor in the U.S. with whom I have had some good interaction in the past.

I had a video chat with this Denver-based editor on July 20th, and it went well. I even let David Jackson know that this editor had done a good job. I was impressed with how we came up with some ideas to make Seeking Alpha run better While he was certainly sensitive to my being so disappointed with how the Bassett Furniture articles were handled, he made no promises to fix that. He did, though, say that it would be addressed over time.

Well, the whole work-week went by, and I heard nothing from him or from anyone at Seeking Alpha. I wasn't expecting an immediate fix, but I was hoping for something that would make me feel more comfortable with Seeking Alpha.

What Now?

I started writing at Seeking Alpha in early 2007 because I was trying to find customers for my outsourced analyst service or perhaps get a job offer. Seeking Alpha didn't pay contributors a penny back then, though it did start with a system based on page views in 2011. I reached out in 2012 to David Jackson to ask about subscription services, and he told me that Seeking Alpha was not ready yet. I wanted to host one, and I had to do it with someone else. I have been at Seeking Alpha for almost two decades now, and I feel like an outsider after this take-down.

I continue to have a lot of respect for what Seeking Alpha has accomplished, and I am unaware of any other services creating a better product. With that said, things don't always go so well for the contributors. I have heard directly from several of them. I like the editorial process, but it can be very inconsistent. There are some excellent editors, and there are some that are not. LIke many things in life, it's all about being in the right place at the right time when it comes to submitting articles to Seeking Alpha. I think it can do a lot to bolster the relationships between the editors and the contributors, and I hope that it will do so.

So now, because I am not feeling like I am part of the team, I am stopping writing new articles at Seeking Alpha. I like to do my research, to write articles and to interact with readers. I can't say that publishing on my own blog will get me very many readers, but, for now, that is what I will do.

I will always be grateful to Seeking Alpha for many reasons, and I wish it the best.