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Institutional investors join the 'revolution'

Investors who read and react to blogs and the Twitterverse may not realize it, but they're actually on the forefront of a revolution, according to Joshua Brown, one of the greatest information disintermediations in modern history.

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Eric Gaillard/Reuters/File
Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo gestures during a conference at the Cannes Lions Festival in Cannes, France in this June 2012, file photo. Social media networks like Twitter are chipping away at Wall Street's "fiefdom," according to the Reformed Broker.

Those of you who read and react to the blogs and Twitter don't realize it but you're on the forefront of a revolution - one of the greatest information disintermediations in modern history.  The Street was able to become The Street for one primary reason - the asymmetricality of opaque and proprietary information.  Every day on social media networks we are chipping away at their fiefdom and every day that edge of theirs erodes a little faster.

Today's sell-side is a corporate manifestation of the tragic Dickens character Miss Havisham - decrepit and increasingly isolated amidst the fading trappings of a long-ago vitality and opulence that, frankly, is never coming back.  Whether or not it grows twisted and vindictive in the absence of relevance it's too soon to tell.

I was quoted extensively in a new story at Institutional Investor Relations as was my pal Howard Lindzon on the topic of buyside institutions using social media to source and discover their own information - away from the traditional sources of Wall Street.  The revolution is already underway and its effects will be irreversible.

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