“Facebook meets Bloomberg” is how some are describing Stockr. com.
The startup's founder, Vinny Jindal, pitched Stockr.com recently at Finnovate New York, the same conference at which Mint.com made a splash after it demonstrated there in 2007.
Stockr.com is clean and simple, and dedicated to people who are passionate about and want to discuss stocks and their respective companies — 14,000, to be exact — with more being added daily.
“I really meant for Stockr to be like the breakfast table. By that I mean casual and mellow, where you can raise things and ask questions without being in a tense, charged environment, a forum that is for now limited just to stocks,” Mr. Jindal said.
The site is intuitive — something I haven't been able to say about Facebook for a long time. (Stockr is in open beta, so you can request a login by clicking the Feedback & Support button on the left of the screen and providing an e-mail address).
Greeting the new user are two basic columns.
On the left is either the news feed or Company Pulse. Two buttons at the top of the screen allow users to toggle between the two.
To the right of the screen is a narrower Watchlist that users configure to include the stocks in which they are most interested. Also displayed are the company's ticker symbol, current share price and price change.
Click on a stock, and the site takes users to a page with more detail on the company, including a chart that displays year-to-date performance but also allows users to view five-day to five-year performance and several points in between.
I took a look at some technology stocks, among them Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO).
In addition to the information above, users will find on display the company's market capitalization, average daily trading volume over the past three months, bid and ask pricing, and a few other data points.
Below that are all those who have posted comments on the company, from public-relations people posting press releases to Stockr users adding their own two cents.
Each entry allows users to add comments, and to the right is a column listing users “who discuss Cisco Systems” to “follow.”
What makes Stockr interesting is that though it appears well funded, it is putty that is yet to be shaped and molded by user interest and input.
For example, I put in a request for more space-related companies, including those that remain privately held, such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX).
“We plan to create other entities beyond just stocks that users can follow, some on people, for example — say, a Larry Page page,” Mr. Jindal said, referring to the Google Inc. co-founder.
Mr. Jindal didn't rule out such pages for electronically traded funds, as well.
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Total Rebalance Expert (TRX), a provider of automated portfolio re-balancing, and Orion Advisor Services LLC recently completed an integration.
I get excited about news related to automated re-balancing because no other process improvement will boost a financial adviser's efficiency so dramatically.
Unfortunately, most advisers aren't yet embracing this technology.
In our tech survey this year, 62.8% of respondents indicated that they don't use a portfolio re-balancing system, down from 70.7% who reported not using one in 2011.
Orion Advisor Services provides fee billing, trading, reconciliation and new-account setup services to mostly large registered investment advisers over its web-based platform, which has $70 billion in assets being managed on it.
TRX was launched in 2010 after three years of development.
RIA firms using both providers can import all the account data, securities, classifications, transactions and tax lot data on their clients from Orion with a single click from within TRX.
Once those data are in TRX, advisers can improve tax efficiency by avoiding short-term gains, detecting loss opportunities, avoiding wash sales and minimizing long-term taxation.
TRX has completed integrations with five other portfolio management providers: Advent Axys, Black Diamond (now part of Advent Software Inc.), FinFolio, Morningstar Office and Schwab's PortfolioCenter.
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Ron Carson is on a roll.
He recently launched both a venture, Carson Institutional Advisory (InvestmentNews, Sept. 24) and a book, “Tested in the Trenches” (InvestmentNews, Oct. 1).
Now he has also released an iPad application.The app is an accoutrement to Mr. Carson's new venture and will come up on an iPad with an eponymous icon but with the clandestine-sounding acronym CIA appearing beneath it.
The app is jam-packed with information, including lots of white papers and copyrighted research.
However, it is a tad slow to load sometimes because the app is calling home to the Carson mother ship to download some of the latest research.
“We want this to be so simple that someone often intimidated with technology has no problems using it,” Mr. Carson said during a demonstration. “It is really meant to be an interactive source of real-time information related to our strategies.”
The app will be free to advisers who have joined the CIA turnkey asset management program, which runs between 45 and 65 basis points.
djanowski@investmentnews.com Twitter: @ddjanowski
