In Case You Were Looking For Another Way to Share Your Stock Picks…
Roi Carthy
26 comments »
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).
Great idea! I see lots of potential in Market Guru …
But I wonder if it would lead to stuffs like “insider trading” and etc…
Sharing profits is one thing and profit manipulation is another..
Same problem with this site as CakeFinancial has… no support for short selling. Any investor that ONLY buys stocks and never shorts is only playing half the market. Its like being a baseball player but only playing outfield, never batting. I just post trades on my site, if people want to follow them, do it there.
Thanks - we were looking for something like this to partner with the new TimothySykes.com (http://timothysykes.com/).
I think the site is brilliant because it shows that investing knowledge can be found anywhere.. you don’t need to be a fat cat with 5 million in the bank to get real investing advice, you get to follow talented investors. It’s not about making 200% a year like the other sites - it’s about making sure your portfolio gets the best return for YOUR goals.. this is the key difference, take note.
Scott
Stock trades seems like something that would be a good fit for Twitter.
How come you this post do not mention and wikinvest.com and vestopia.com which seem bigger than those above?
great concept!
another great thing about this site is that u don’t have to invest any money to prove your talent - huge difference oppose to the sites mentioned above…
other large sites for managing portfolios , posting and getting investment ideas :
The Motley Fool - http://caps.fool.com/
MSN - http://moneycentral.msn.com/home.asp - look under investing for portfolio manager
Google - finance.google.com - look under portfolios
Yahoo - http://finance.yahoo.com - look under my portfolios
I’ve tried on for size most of the financial community sites. I actually find Market Guru to have the best interface. It is straight and to the point, navigation is clear and simple. They do however need to gain a volume of users for the shared knowledge to be more meaningful.
r size most of the financial community sites. I actually find Market Guru to have the best interface. It is straight and to th point, navigation is clear and simple. They do however need to gain a volume of u. link
pccti
I’m not sure if people will actually pay for this sort of stuff. Most people I know lose money on the stockmarket not because they do not have access to good information but because of greed and poor understanding of investment basics.
Good interface, simple and to the point. There is a boardcentral.com site that aggregates Community picks and investment recommendation from messages boards and majority of Social Investing sites. If you look here
http://www.boardcentral.com/stocks/community they have picks from 10 sites!
Hi guys and thanks for all of your feedback. Our purpose at MarketGuru is to give people advice that they can actually use.. the only way of doing so is by creating a transparent platform for ANYONE to show their talent on. We don’t ask that you send us a bank statement like covetor and we don’t rank you based on your portfolio’s return - because that invites risk.
MarketGuru was founded specifically to provide a tool for millions of “family brokers”. We believe advice must be given to people based on their investment style (risk) and philosophy. By allowing each member 3 gurus we provide the customer with tools to find other members who share his or her style of investing but have a better background or more time to invest better. Our goal is not to bring you the hottest tip for an over night 300% return.. our goal is to help you make your portfolio returns better than they would be without your Gurus. Only on MarketGuru have we created a platform where your Gurus performance is known and since they get paid by customers, they have nothing but their followers best interest at heart, so sorry Darren - no manipulations here.
Thanks so much for all your support. Tell your friends and help us spread the word.
With humble gratitude,
Guliamo & the team at MG.
@ Roi Carthy:
This post is misleading – I’ve just signed up to MarketGuru – they are not in the same category of Covestor and Cake, as they only offer virtual portfolio tracking, whereas the rest invested millions in tracking your real portfolio. It is far easier and amateurish to do what MarketGuru is doing – from their site: “MarketGuru provides you with complete management tools of a virtual investment portfolio.”
if any, MG are in the feelingbulish.com category , or message boards category.
GET YOUR STORY RIGHT
ha ha ha! another site for people who don’t understand randomness and have no idea about black swans and fat tails…
When your portfolio’s up - you are the smart cookie, when it’s down - it’s market’s fault, right?
it’s a waste of time and a builder of illusions.
About me: former trader who got to see the market in action and study a lot about its past, so I kinda know what I’m talking about. An example: my virtual portfolio that I created on March 29, 2007 is up 32% as of today with no trades since inception. Does it make me a winner? NO! It’s pure randomness.
It’s a nice thing as entertainment though…
BUY EAWD ON MONDAY. BIG ANNOUNCEMENT COMING. DON’T BE LEFT BEHIND AND REGRET IT!!!
“Many of us think we know what’s going to happen to the stock market. Few of us actually do.”
would be best rewritten as
“Many of us think we know what’s going to happen to the stock market. None of us actually do.”
Read “Fooled by Randomness”.
Here is a good guide to social investing websites. Very comprehensive list.
http://www.marketguru.com have a great idea, Good interface and lots of potential. great job
I love the site, and i love the concept. don’t follow gurus blindly, but rather see that their style is similar to your goals (the site cleverly matches your portfolio to a risk propensity category). to really become a guru people (over the long run) shouldn’t take risks and are insented to provide the rational for their actions.
still needs to gain some critical mass, but definitely one of the best sites I’ve seen both from a concept and execution perspective.
This is (conceptually) EXTREMELY similar to iExchange, a dot-bomb flameout which I loved but which simply failed to generate substantial revenue. I still proudly wear their t-shirt out jogging.
As a new Guru on http://www.marketguru.com I invite you to register, use it for a week, then decide.
Great Concept, Most friendly GUI you can ask for at these kind of sites.
Not the usual “too much information” stock quotes websites, but truly - easy to use interface, that will make your life a little easier when it comes to follow other, more experienced experts, investing their money.
If you’re the sole manager of your portfolio, create an account, choose 3 guru’s that best describes your risk level, sit back and give this innovating mechanism a chance to improve your results.
It looks like they are really trying to hide the fact that they are an Israeli company. Private WHOIS record. No mention on the site except for a clause buried in the terms and conditions that the jurisdiction for any disputes is the courts of Tel Aviv.
Just check the the article header
Website: http://www.marketguru.com
Location: Israel
how to outperform S&P 500 consistently and be a guru for a lifetime ?
________________________________________________________
open 100 different accounts using 100 different screen names at marketguru.com (you don’t have to prove you are a real investor and give your name like with few of the competitors )
buy NYSE: IVV for your 100 accounts, and follow S&P 500. add 1-3 different stocks to each of your 100 portfolios (10-30% of each portfolio)
the result: you will surely outperform S&P 500 consistently in coming years (at least some of your 100 portfolios will)
investors will surely follow you, after all, you are the “GURU” !! though they might move & jump between the different portfolios you manage on the site…:)
as you didn’t pay anything for the portfolios that got beaten by S&P 500, you probable can quit your daily job, and enjoy the “funny money” you will get from the site subscribers
another idea : when you will have enough followers in your different portfolio accounts, you can start buying few small cap (or pink sheets/OTC), wait few hours for the followers to start buying massively, and start selling … this will improve your guru results as well … and bring more followers for the next “round”
sorry fellow investors , but this is not for me…