First of all, I agreed wholeheartedly with this statement:

“Ultimately no returns on Covestor are ever going to be as good as the best posted on fantasy sites such as socialpicks or CAPS – because, without real money, there is no dis-incentive for high risk ‘attention getting’ bets.”

Without real money on the line? An opinion doesn’t mean jack-squat. The name of the game is risk, and reward. Covestor not only shows the rewards people make, but the risk they’ve taken on. That’s key. Because everyone’s risk tolerance is completely different.

Something else I’m coming to find that agrees with Rikki’s statement? I’m not really concerned with others spectacular returns. I don’t like that style of trading or investing. Look at Tim Sykes. Tim has phenomenal results. But that style of trading just isn’t for me. The markets are, what they are, because we all approach the business differently, and look to make money in different ways; we’re comfortable with different methods.

Covestor simply allows you to find individuals who truly are ‘putting it on the line’, and may have a similar approach.

The free-flow of information is truly revolutionizing the markets however. It will be very interesting to see how this all pans out in 10 years time.

In addition, the tools are fantastic. On each and every blog post I now put up? The ‘certified investor’ widget is on my post.

So what are we doing to address that:

1) add full transparency and let everyone see where the results come from, the risk as well as the retun – and how long they’ve outperformed benchmarks

2) Multi-faceted rankings. Investment is not a single axis competition. I am interested in who performs well with low trading volumes, diversifed or tight portfolios, sectors or geographies – when we launch rankings we will have over 50 tables

3) It has to be real money. If someone can consistently make real returns with real money and has the risk profile I’m comfortable with – then I certainly interested.

Ultimately no returns on Covestor are ever going to be as good as the best posted on fantasy sites such as socialpicks or CAPS – because, without real money, there is no dis-incentive for high risk ‘attention getting’ bets.

I personally am a buy-and-hold investor and one of the reasons I founded this business with my partners is not because I wanted to find risky traders – but because I was appalled at the cost of private wealth managers and the lack of transparency and choice I had in choosing who to take allocation guidance from.

So give me some boring options please – for 75% of my money that will go for my retirement and my kid’s education – I want boring sensible planning. I just don’t want to pay 3% to have it managed by a brand name bank.