Voice Analysis

Option ARMageddon is a blog that has no correlation with Armageddon,but the blogger has used that word to emphasize ARM as one can see from the title how he capitalize ARM and use lower-case letters for the rest of word. One cannot understand his blog without knowing ARM. Then what is ARM or option ARM? ARM stands for adjustable rate mortgage. Unlike fixed-rate mortgages that we have used since the Great Depression, borrowers with ARM would see their mortgage payments fluctuate with the change of the index rate. Option ARM adds the flexibility of selecting the rate that borrowers want to pay at the beginning of the term and also, they could just pay the minimum payment due resulting the principal balance to swell.
The blogger, Rolfe Winkler, a former hedge fund analyst who currently holds Chartered Financial Analyst designation writes his blog expecting that readers already know what ARM is. So, this blog is not for readers who have not received the basic financial education. Then why is he writing a blog that not everyone could understand? He says that,

Because I think Option ARM loans, particularly borrowers’ over-reliance on them towards the end of the housing bubble, exemplify much that is wrong with our economy: deferred interest payments, growing loan balances, low (no?) down payments.

He tries to make a point that Option ARM symbolizes problems we have with our economy. He also mentions why we have economic problems and who have started them:

if American individuals, institutions, companies and governments had more skin in the game–and cared more about paying their debts–we’d all be better off.

Yes, unlike other blogs that only analyze issues, this blog uses lots of criticism and arguments. I have to say that is the reason why this blog stands out from others.
In his post, "With Allstate, you’re NOT in good hands ," he criticizes the government for allowing Allstate to have lenient accounting standards and also criticize Allstate for its unethical tactics.

Allstate is shopping for sympathetic regulators that will help it hide its deteriorating financial condition. By suddenly changing the way Allstate calculates its regulatory capital, allowing the company to include deferred tax assets, the Illinois insurance regulator is putting all of Allstate’s policy-holders at risk, not just those in Illinois.

From this quote, I found a strategy he had used to entice readers to keep on reading. This post in particular, he wrote very much and it was hard to keep up with what he had to say due to the fact that he used many accounting terms such as leverage ratio;however, I had to read the rest of the post when he mentioned

all of Allstate’s policy-holders at risk, not just those in Illinois.

I was worried about my aunt who is a customer of Allstate and had to call her while I read his post. He knows if his post is interesting, readers would react to it. Out of many posts he had written, this post caught my eyes because of the title. The blogger used sarcasm and rephrased Allstate's slogan, "With Allstate, you're in good hands" to emphasize the fact that their slogan is just a puffery. I was surprised when he said,

If an insurance company makes too many crappy investments, they’ll have nothing left over to pay hurricane, car accident or life insurance claims.

In a professional writing, writers do not use words such as crappy since this word is not considered as a proper word; however, he used that word to emphasize insurance companies' outrageous conducts. I was shocked when I saw that word since that was the word I would not have used in writing, but no other word would replace the meaning this word had. It is true that bloggers' usage of everyday language in posts is what makes blogs very popular. As a last comment, he said,

It’s horseshit that regulators are changing capital adequacy requirements when the company is still making payments to shareholders.

Through his last sentence, he summarizes his point that both the government and the corporation are at fault for economic problems. It is important to notice that he never offers any solution to the problem, but just analyze the problem. Is he worried about the consequences of going against the big people?

In his other post, Bill Gross says government must spend “trillions” , he writes about how our greed have led to this gloomy economic situation. At first, I read this post to learn what this prominent figure had to say. But, I realized very soon that this post was not about Gross' advice to the government, but it was about why he wanted government to spend more money. Now I know why he emphasizes the word, trillions. Whenever he emphasizes a word in his title, that word implies what he is going to talk about. He describes why Gross wants bigger stimulus package by saying,

If banks collapse, shareholders will be wiped out and bondholders like Bill Gross will feel a lot of pain themselves. Unless of course the banks and other distressed companies magically survive courtesy of massive government intervention to keep asset prices from falling.

He purposely made the second sentence into a fragment sentence to emphasize the pain he and others would experience. He knew that if he connected two sentences together, his emphasis on the pain of bondholders would diminish. It is interesting to see how he implied the consequence of massive government intervention without saying how it would benefit wealthy bondholders.

Overall, most of his posts are in negative tone and filled with criticism and sarcasm. In almost every post, he was angry and found someone to blame at. The reason behind his negative views is that he wants people to see what we have done to our economy and ask us to stop blaming others because all of us contribute to the problem.

His link strategy is outstanding; he uses a link program, The Wikinvest Wire, to increase his exposure by having link to his blog at other blogs and sites. If there is a related post or article on other blogs, his blog would list on the bottom of the page making curious readers to click on his blog. This is no wonder that his blog lists at the top at Technorati. Another outstanding aspect of his blog is that he only uses reputable sources for his analysis such as Bloomberg. He probably knows that by using reputable sources, his blog would also be considered as a reputable medium.