In a previous blog post, I had described a few Web 2.0 financial applications that were already operational at the time.
I recently attended the re-launch party of TechCrunchUK in London. You can read more about this party here, where I happened to meet up with Michael Arrington, the publisher of TechCrunch.
At this gathering, I came across one more example of a Web 2.0 financial application: Covestor.
Covestor seeks to provide more recognition, resources and rewards to every day stock market players who are adept at matching, or beating, the results of pros – “proven self-investors” as the company’s tagline calls them. We all know that you don’t have to be a professional money manager to be a smart investor. Many of us have come across investors who largely to do their own research and seem to regularly beat the markets with their private portfolios. Covestor now provides a platform for them to benefit from their skills by broad basing them.
Apart from a fairly complex working model, Covestor has a restrictive membership process (Covestor’s director, Rikki Tahta, told me that Covestor probably has the toughest membership standards for any website, and I tend to believe him after visiting the website). You need to be invited, or complete a confidential questionnaire to be considered for a membership. This is possibly to ensure that it contains only the investment profiles of genuine smart investors. You are also expected to share with Covestor your share trading account username and password, which I hope it will safeguard very tightly. Once you get past these hurdles, Covestor seems definitely worth your while. Click here for a live demo of Covestor.
Readers might like to know that I have recently published a couple of articles on Web 2.0, one on usability and the other on potential uses in BFSI applications. You can click here to download these articles.