Net News, May 1995

Those unfamiliar with the concept of "Net surfing," or the process of designing a World Wide Web page for themselves or their firms, may not fully understand how quickly the Internet has exploded over the past few years. Though corporations had previously been connected to the Net, the user-friendly, point-and-click aspects of the Web have created a race for connectivity that has been breathtakingly fast.

Although much lip service is paid to the Internet as the next wave of communications technology, many are hesitant to invest too much time and money in what skeptics view as the CB radio of the '90s. As a result, many corporate Web sites seem to take the trendy phrase "Internet presence" too literally, offering that and little else.

Judging from the volume of hypertext links to it, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's site has quickly gained the respect of the Net community. Providing easy access to information, from press releases and Hill testimony to biographies and pictures of CME officials, it displays a logical design absent from many corporate sites.

Other exchange sites are presently under revision. The Chicago Board of Trade's home page, mentioned in last month's cover story of Futures Industry, has been taken offline for redesign. Nancy Villanova of the CBOT's communications office says the site should be back online in early June. Similarly, LIFFE's site was taken down for construction in late April.

The home of J.P. Morgan's Web site features a large, attractive graphic which loads rather slowly over a typical modem link. However, patient Net surfers will find a noteworthy amount of information within Alongside a corporate overview and news briefs, visitors can access daily returns on Morgan's Commodity Index - both formatted text for online browsing and tab-delimited text for download - as well as updates on the firm's patented RiskMetrics data sets. The results may be a bit dry for casual Net surfers, but an aid to Morgan's customers.

Quote vendors, already familiar with the electronic side of the industry, have quickly established themselves on the Web. North American Quotations, Inc. has established QuoteServer, a stock query service located on the Web site of the firm Security APL. By entering a stock symbol, the user can draw upon the stock's trading history and search for hyperlinks to other mentions of it on the Web - including links within the controversial EDGAR site, which provides online access to all SEC filings since 1994.

Knight-Ridder Financial maintains a U.K.-based Web page offering subscriptions to both software and hard-copy financial information. Visitors who complete the text-input registration form (name, address etc.) can subscribe to Commodity Perspective, a weekly book of 10" by 12" full-page charts, or receive a free trial subscription to KRF's Data Kit software package.

Palo Alto, California-based QuoteCom, Inc. offers an online subscription service, with a basic service of 100 quotes per day, portfolio management and news headlines. Users must complete a registration form similar to Knight-Ridder's, and though some information is free, the site provides paid subscriptions jointly with online services such as the S&P Stock Guide, PR Newswire News and Freese-Notis Weather.

In fact, Charlie Notis and Harvey Freese have been rather busy in cyberspace lately. In addition to their service through QuoteCom and their own Freese-Notis weather page, the pair make several appearances at the Investment Crossroads, a multi-link home page sponsored by various corporate configurations of Freese, Notis and Jim Roemer, their cofounder in the Weather Trader advisory. Roemer, a former winner in the World Cup Championship of Futures Trading (and former Topeka, KS weatherman), offers his own Roemer Weather site off the Crossroads, featuring a Daily Weather CyberFax, an online version of his Tradewinds newsletter, and several articles on... well, on Jim Roemer. This colorful Web site is livelier than many corporate pages, and may attract the casual Net surfer.

Sean G. Thomas, Sean Thomas, Sean Garrett Thomas