Exit Polls on Stocks?

The Wall Street Journal

This stock market is so hard to figure out, one Web site is trying to do it by using political-style polling.

The Web site, ePredict.com, claims it can use its "systematic analysis" -- surveys of the site's users -- to predict where a stock might be headed. Unveiled this month, the Web site polls its users about various stocks and industry sectors; the results determine the site's stock recommendations.

In December, for example, shares of online direct marketer MyPoints.com Inc. were soaring, up tenfold from their initial public offering four months earlier. So ePredict.com asked users if the stock would stay up. A majority said no, prompting the site's "strong sell" recommendation. And the shares dropped.

Hardened Wall Street types might scoff that it didn't take a poll to predict that MyPoints was due for a pullback; the stock market itself is a vote on prices.