I've thought of going public once or twice on my life, sort of like how an inspired actor contemplates taking his or her work onto the marble (or acrylic? your call) steps of Hollywood. Now that I actually got a domain name (www.diyeconomist.com), it seems like an appropriate time to think of the question. In an economic sense, of course :P. You thought I was going philosophical? Sheesh.
The (unstated) theories of efficient markets states that as a profitable opportunity emerges onto the marketplace (seasonality trends, large spread arbitrage mergers), participates line up to exploit the opportunity until the opportunity is no longer worth it in an economic sense. This might also be called the theory of convergence, for merger-related and other arbitrage opportunities. This is only expected because the participants are rational, of course, which is a genuinely good assumption. Do I have to worry about this converging effect if I decide to publish? On one hand, I could look at the effect the book "Irrational Exuberance" had on the market during the 2000's; even though not everyone read it, and not at the same time, and even though it wasn't the only reason "the market crashed", it was certainly a precipitating factor as investors then had to evaluate the rationality of the group's decision (this ill-fated group being comprised of individual investors, "professionals" who bought into the story for one reason or another, analysts, and news anchors). But then on the other hand, if even a best-selling book was only a moderate contributor to the effects of the bursting of the bubble, what effect would a simple internet blog have? (Well, barring the Kensington lock fiasco, but still...)
In the real world, a simple internet blog could probably matter. But in the financial world, where everyone has two opinions (and they stink, of course), ... who cares?
