Many of us think we know what’s going to happen to the stock market. Few of us actually do. MarketGuru enables the more talented investors to reap the benefits of their predictive capacities and help others along the way.
While many social investment sites rank members almost entirely on their portfolio yields, the MarketGuru experience centers on trust. Your goal is to establish yourself as a “guru” – a member that other investors will turn to for advice. Gurus post their trade activity and motivations, which are then relayed to their followers through email. These followers can pay a premium of $30 per month to have messages from a maximum of three gurus delivered to them so they can execute their own transactions under similar market conditions.
The site currently offers no options for actual trading – instead, everything is carried out in a self-reported portfolio. MarketGuru hopes to implement real trading at some point in the future but it is still a long ways off.
Gurus are paid $5 per month for each follower they have, providing an incentive for them to attract and take care of their supporters. This meager bonus seems pretty lousy when compared to the vast sums of money that stand to be lost or gained on the market. I suspect that a few all-star gurus who collect hundreds of followers will do quite well for themselves, but most people will be left with just some additional pocket change.
MarketGuru’s concept has promise but the site is entering a space with a number competitors who provide very similar offerings. These include Covestor, CakeFinancial, SocialPicks, and Mint, which has just introducing investment tracking. That said, the social investment space can certainly support more than a few competitors, so MarketGuru has a fighting chance (especially with people who don’t actually want to play with real money).