Sometimes a startup rolls out a new feature, and it just hits the sweet spot of what consumers are craving. It looks like Wikinvest has a hit on its hands with its new realtime portfolio tracker. Less than three weeks after its launch, Wikinvest is tracking $1 billion worth of real investments tied to the real brokerage accounts of about 10,000 members.
The Wikinvest portfolio tracker lets anyone link up their real brokerage accounts to Wikinvest so they can keep tabs on their actual holdings, which are updated automatically every time you make a trade. That way you don’t have to manually update your portfolio (which is what most finance sites make you do). Getting to $1 billion worth of tracked assets in such a short time suggests there is a real need for such a service. Social investing sites like Covestor and KaChing also let you track your real brokerage accounts, and even invest alongside other users—Covestor recently passed $100 million in tracked trades managed through its service.
The difference is that Wikinvest’s portfolio tracker is purely an information product. Wikinvest doesn’t hold or direct any of these assets. They are all in Etrade, Schwab, Ameritrade, Fidleity, and other brokers. But Wikinvest ingests the data and gives people one place to research and track all of their investments. Co-founder Mike Sha says the “vast vast majority of the adoption was from new users.”
One of the biggest requests for the product has been to add brokers who manage 401(k)s. Sha describes the pain financial consumers are feeling: “A lot of these financial institutions are really old school, whose wealth management products were centered around communicating with clients via phone calls and monthly/quarterly reports by mail. Times have changed and they’ve fallen way behind on their web-based self-service tools.”
Wikinvest is just as it sounds; a wiki for investing. The company seeks to take advantage of the large numbers of investors and investing savvy people who are looking to the web to get better trading tips. Like most wikis, Wikinvest will face a few problems including spammed/tampered entries, lack of incentive to create content and the dubious authority of users generating content. These problems exist for Wikipedia as well, yet Wikipedia continues to have as...
Covestor brings the clarity and efficiency of an online marketplace to the investment management industry. Investors can compare and select from a transparent marketplace of investment management talent that includes top performing portfolio managers and successful investors. Covestor’s Portfolio Sync technology automatically replicates trades, providing clients the convenience of “set and forget” functionality and the protection of Covestor’s proprietary trade filtering. Covestor is widely regarded as a pioneer in bringing separately managed accounts (SMAs) online in a transparent marketplace....
Wealthfront (previously kaChing) combines world-class financial expertise and leading edge technology to provide sophisticated investment management at prices affordable for everyone. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and received funding from Index Ventures, Social+Capital Partnership, Greylock Partners, DAG Ventures and such angel investors as Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Jeff Jordan.
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