Gostevie wrote:I’m not entirely sure why that was the case but it could be that some of the more experienced and eloquent investors drifted across to newer platforms such as Stockopedia and even Twitter to discuss their investment ideas, which had a snowball effect of fewer other people visiting.
A few thoughts:
1) The 2008 financial crisis did a lot of damage. Many names vanished from TMF during this period. They weren't replaced to the same extent by newcomers. I suspect that a lot of posters cut their TMF activity during and after this period (heavy losses can greatly inhibit some people)
For example, at a TMF social a couple of years later, I was told of one regular poster who was bankrupted owing £450,000 thanks to a big holding in RBS.
2) When Paulypilot moved to Stockopedia, quite a few posters went with him. Stockopedia's boards get very few discussions, most of the interaction there is people commenting on Paulypilot's articles.
3) A few people, jealous of how much money some of us had made on small cap oils, managed to get TMF to kick emptyend (ee) off the site. Since ee was the most prolific and influential oil and gas poster, traffic dropped and was never replaced. Lots of oil and gas posters moved to ADVFN, following ee.
Pre-2008 Oil and Gas, and Paulypilot's Pub, were the big successes. Less so post-2008. The number of TMF posters who turned up at Soco's AGMs dropped dramatically, starting with the 2009 AGM.
4) Increased use of twitter. An example is WShak, who was a prolific oil and gas poster on TMF, who is still very active on twitter