Note: There is a one-question survey at the end of the post, and your input is appreciated.
Today, I am writing because SGXcafe has reached a crossroad. You might know that SGXcafe started out as a personal project, but I made it available for public use when I thought it might help other small retail investors like myself invest better. However, SGX recently contacted me and said that SGXcafe needs appropriate licensing to continue running. The amount ranges from several hundreds to several thousands a month, depending on how much data is licensed.
It has always been my intention to keep SGXcafe free, as I have wanted it to be a community to freely share knowledge with. But faced with such a tremendous monthly sum, it is something I simply cannot afford to upkeep on my own. I am but a one-man show, and I am already investing a lot of my time and effort into SGXcafe. As much as I want to, I cannot fork out the thousands required to keep the site running as well.
From here, there are a few options as to how SGXcafe can proceed:
1. Start charging users a small monthly amount to help offset the licensing fees
2. Approach companies to advertise on SGXcafe
3. Close down parts of the site that SGX claims is an infringement of their intellectual property
On that note, you may start to notice some features becoming unavailable in the coming weeks, but rest assured SGXcafe will not completely close down. Your portfolio data will also not be deleted. I have also made it possible to export your portfolio data should you decide not to stay with SGXcafe 🙁
However, please know that in the meantime, I will continue to search for funding for SGXcafe. If you have any contacts (PR/marketing in companies), a referral is deeply appreciated.
I hope to be able to keep SGXcafe running at its full potential for all the investors like me out there, and I appreciate every bit of support!
Thank you for your continued support for SGXcafe.
Hi Evan, I am a frequent user of your excellent site, and would gladly support it with a small monthly fee for continued usage.
Hi Rhin, thank you for your support! 🙂
Hi Evan, I am surprised by SGX’s action and curious about the basis of ‘appropriate licensing’ required by SGX? Does it refer to specific content found here or does it refer to the nature of the site?
do not support paying to SGX, they have earned enough from me. should challenge them. let them know how much they earn when users here take advice to buy or sell with them, you are doing them a favor.
Hi Evan, this is a licensing issue ? I have seen others scrap the yahoo finance site for the pricing info. Of course, don’t have announcements nor dividend stuff. Really sad to see sgx adopt such an approach when their whole retail, IPO and growth strategy has gone nowhere in last 5 years. I would have thought they should engage you to drive or expand usage. Data is the life blood of exchanges. Think laterally.
If you are forced to close, you an open source your code. Licensing shouldn’t apply to personal use. Other people can still use privately for their own info and blogs. In fact, this is a worse off situation for SGX as now you have 50 web crawlers hitting their servers instead of your one. You are doing them a favour. Their lack of creative thinking and understanding knowledge effects. Tks.
+1 to thevaluefund’s comment
I think it stemmed from the fact they themself are charging for stock facts viewing which to me is a useless services.All other search services are still free.Comparing what Evan does and what they are charging for there isn’t any clash of conflict.Nevertheless for all that Evan does I still think it fair to support him @ Option 3.Save me a lot of work looking for what I wanted.
Hi all,
First of all, thank you for your support and concern! 🙂
I did mention to SGX if there will be opportunities for collaboration but got ignored. Guess SGXcafe is still too small for them.
Anyway, SGX and I now have a channel of communication and they have been patience in answering my questions and have gave me ample time to make adjustments.
As for open source my code, I have reservations for two reasons. 1) It is too integrated to many of my other works. I would either have to open source everything or spend time separating them. 2) It is not written in excel 🙂 So I would have to spend additional effort to simply it such that anyone can take advantage of it and not just people with software engineering knowledge.
I will keep everyone updated of the progress.
Cheers,
Evan
Appreciate your work and effort on this site. will be a same to see it go to waste due to the SGX bullying behaviour.
Thank you for your appreciation 🙂
Anyone who is holding SGX, go complain at their AGM 😉
I have only just started using the website.
It is impressive.
Clearly just a few days use is not going to give me confidence that the platform is solid and supported. But so far so good, I hope it will continue.