Proven self investors

Completing your Fact Sheet Profile

Completing your Fact Sheet Profile provides you with a verified track record of your investment activity, helps others find you and enables you to compare other members' investment styles to your own.  Covestor now provides the ability to quickly view the status of your Fact Sheet Profile - by adding all the data requested in your Fact Sheet Editor you will successfully establish a 100% complete Profile.

Access your Fact Sheet Editor by selecting Fact Sheet Editor under the Home menu, or by clicking one of the Edit links located on your Fact Sheet.  Here are some tips to help you establish a full Profile:

1. Did you fill out all the Personal Profile information in About You and upload a Head Shot?
2. Did you complete your Investment Profile and Investor Type within Find Others?
3. Did you setup "Auto Trade Import" connecting your account to your broker?
   

Once your Profile is 100% complete, your status bar will look like this:

Covestor Invitations Feature Overview

Now that Covestor has come out of Beta, anyone can join and there are new features for all members to take advantage of. One in particular that is quite useful is the Invitations feature which can be used to tell other self-directed investors about Covestor.

To access the Invitations area of your account, simply login and click on the "Invitations" sub-tab which can be found within the "Home" tab. With the new Invitations setup you can:

• Quickly invite individual friends - Simply fill in the name of the person you are inviting to the site along with their email address, then click "post" to send the invite. A note is automatically attached to each invitation which you can edit.
• Import your address book and invite many friends - Click the "Address Book" tab and then the "Load Contacts into Address Book" link. This will open the option for you to import a standard CSV file with all your contacts from Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc. to invite.

After you import any contact list you can easily invite, delete, or add more contacts to your address book. 

Invitations can also be sent out right from your My Account page or from another member's Fact Sheet. If you like a particular member simply click the "Tell Your Friends" link located on the top right side of any Fact Sheet to send an Invitation which recommends that member.

This feature gives members a new way to tell others about the smart investors on the site and about the benefits of joining.

(Note: Covestor only stores your address book information when you upload it to enable you to send invitations - it will be used for no other purpose.)

Covestor Comes Out Of Beta!

Today you will notice some significant changes to the website as Covestor comes out of beta and opens up to anyone to join. You should find this improves your experience on the website and significantly expands the community for you to help/learn from.

Investors of any level or experience can now register to track the live trades of the self directed investors on the site (i.e. you no longer need a membership code/invitation or to share a portfolio to participate). To create an account, simply choose a username and password. Once signed in you can track the real trades of tens of thousands of brilliant investors for free, and/or add your portfolio at any time to better track your own investments. Invite your friends as we are now open to the world!

Other new features include:

• Enhanced Personal Profiles: More detailed Profiles of the members and the ability to see how they match your investment goals.
• Simplified Navigation: Including the ability to access a list of recently viewed members (per the Amazon recently viewed items feature).
• Updated design: New style and colors to make the Fact Sheets and the Editor easier to use.
• Extended Invitations: Full address book upload and management functionality. Tell your friends about other members on the site and they will tell their friends about you.
• Follower Fact Sheets: If choosing just to follow others, you are still given a Blog and Watchlist (i.e. everything other than Trades and Holdings, per members sharing portfolios).

If you are an existing member all of your account information will be on new site. Let us know if there is anything that you think hasn’t been correctly updated. Send us your feedback on the upgrade and as always any further suggestions for improvement. Great work Covestor team...

Market Talk Within The Community

Creating your own Covestor blog is a great way to share your market thoughts, insights, and trade rationales.

 A number of members post to their Covestor blogs daily. Recent interesting posts from the community include:

• Double Inverse ETFs: Born To Lose - Member Woodshedder argues that Ultra ETFs are actually terrible long term holds and only compound losses over the long term. Are these ETFS really only useful for short term plays?
• Visa (V) "Trading Transparency" - Market veteran BobsAdvice explains why he gives Visa stock shares a hold rating and why it is not a buy at this time.
• I Wouldn't Touch Financial Stocks - User Irrational shares his thoughts on this sector and how the recent financial woes from major firms only show weakness, and not strength in the future.
• How To Play a Market That Isn't Going Your Way - Member StockMarketBeat shares his latest RealMoney article citing his three options for dealing with a bad market.

Job Opportunity: Senior Systems Administrator, Linux

We are looking for hands-on Senior Systems Administrator with a minimum of 5+ years’ demonstrable systems administration experience maintaining scalable web environments with high availability. You will be seeking a challenging opportunity within a fast-paced early stage business which is looking for someone to take charge of the scaling and management of its systems infrastructure.

The role encompasses a broad remit so you will have a range of skills including extensive knowledge of Unix/Linux along with expertise of systems security best practice and database set up and tuning. You will be a self starter able to assume full responsibility for planning and managing all activities in a structured and methodical manner. And able to rapidly absorb and implement new technologies and procedures.

EXPERIENCE REQUIRED

• Optimization and tuning of web servers (Apache), databases (PostgreSQL / MySQL) and operating systems (Linux) to anticipate capacity, ensure consistent response times and minimise downtime
• Implementation and maintenance of load balancing, clustering and fault tolerance systems at both web server and database level to support growth in traffic and data
• Managing systems security in an environment where security controls and practices are an essential part of the day to day activities
• System monitoring and pre-emptive problem detection
• Planning, documenting and delivering of System Administration projects

Solid Knowledge of:

• Database tuning and clustering
• Sys admin shell scripting (e.g. Perl, Bash)
• Network file systems
• Firewalls and OS security
• Backups and recovery plans
• Software upgrade / update management

Finally, a plus if you have knowledge of implementing web cache systems, horizontal scaling (e.g. database sharding).

Applicants must be eligible to work in the UK. If you or someone you know fits the description send us an email with a resume to jobs [at] covestor.com.

Weekly Member Interview: Rob Tsai

This week's Wall Street Transcript Interview is with Covestor member Rob Tsai, aka zenrob. Rob works in New York City as a software sales consultant, and previously held positions in finance as a convertible bond analyst at D.E. Shaw and in M&A at a boutique investment bank. He is also the author of popular blog Biz Dev In NYC.

Rob is a growth investor who seeks to play into long term trends. He invests in large cap stocks that have both a strong balance sheet and wide exposure to international markets.

In his interview Rob talks about how his father influenced his trading style. Over the years he has built a portfolio around global growth and commodities, most recently focused on opportunities in agriculture.

Rob has some valuable advice for other members. For example, he recommends The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, as a good book for thinking about global trends and the importance of the middle classes in emerging markets.

Rob tracks his portfolio on Covestor and you can find the interview - as always - on the top right hand side of his fact sheet.

Job Opportunity: Web Developer, CSS/XHTML Guru - London

We are looking for a hands-on Web Developer with strong CSS/HTML skills who enjoys working within a small development team. With 3+ years experience building web applications, you will now be seeking a challenging opportunity within a fast-paced early stage business working with latest web technologies.

Requirements

• Proven, in-depth experience building standards compliant XHTML/CSS websites, managing cross-compatibility issues between browsers and enhancing legacy code.
• Experience implementing websites using one or more of Coldfusion, PHP or JSP
• Proficient in Javascript
• Strong SQL programming skills

Coldfusion expertise is preferred but not mandatory if the candidate has experience with other web technologies such as PHP or JSP.

Note: this is a web developer position (including HTML/CSS) - we are not looking for a web designer.

Desired

• Photoshop and Image/CSS/HTML optimization
• AJAX
• Knowledge of Linux environment

Applicants must be eligible to work in the UK. If you or someone you know fits the description send us an email with a resume to covestoritjobs [at] gmail.com

Job Opportunity: Head of Product Marketing

We are working hard here at Covestor to fill a number of key roles to build out the team, so over the next few days will be posting a number of these to our blog. We know that many of our users share our passion for what we are doing so please get in touch with us if any of these are of interest.

Head of Product Marketing

The Head of Product Marketing is a senior level role responsible for owning and delivering the user experience of the Covestor.com website. The objective of the role is to ensure the development of a product that is the number one destination for serious investors to share their portfolios and for highlighting great performers.

Key Responsibilities

• Customer profiling – understanding user needs
• • Market research, market analysis and customer segmentation
  • All site monitoring and metrics
• User experience – direct responsibility for the user experience (all functionality and content) on the Covestor website
• • Ensuring the quality of the user experience and user satisfaction
•  Product development – Developing detailed requirements for all website features and functionality
• • Prioritization of requirements in line with customer demand and business needs
  • Outline of deliverables for all website changes/upgrades
  • Managing all front end communication including usability, design and typography
• Internal Communication – Working closely with the product management and operations teams, to ensure successful product delivery.  To lead the process of feature prioritization and develop detailed requirements for hand over to Product Management.

Requirements

• Understanding of consumer finance user behavior
• 10+ years experience of Online Product Marketing
• Experience developing and prioritizing user requirements

Applicants must be eligible to work in either the US or UK. If you or someone you know fits the description send us an email with a resume to covestorjobs [at] gmail.com

Covestor at the Money Show

We are currently at the Money Show being held at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas. We are at booth #817 in the exhibit hall so if you are attending make sure to stop by and say hello.

The conference runs until Thursday May 15th.

Weekly Member Interview: Rashid Garuba

This week's Wall Street Transcript Interview is with Covestor member Rashid Garuba, aka retire48.  Rashid works as an architect in Georgia and invests as his primary hobby. You can read his daily market thoughts in his trading journal.

Rashid's trading style is about following economic and sectoral trends - and then focusing on what he is invested in. As a medium term technical trader he maintains a portfolio of up to about eight stocks at any given time.

In his interview Rashid discusses how important sector momentum is to his research. He outlines, as an example, the rise of commodities given the struggling US Dollar, stressing the importance of keeping an eye on both macro economic trends as well as the micro economic picture. 

Rashid tracks his portfolio on Covestor and is currently ranked sixth on the site by Annualized Sharpe Ratio.  You can find the interview - as always - on the top right hand side of his fact sheet.