This maintenance work should take 10-20 minutes. During the maintenance www.covestor.com will not be available. We apologize for the inconvenience. Should you have any questions, please contact us.
We will be performing scheduled maintenance tonight between EDT 5:00pm - 8:00pm / GMT 9:00pm - 12:00pm.
A number of members have requested that we support a view of their portfolio performance including cash, and so the first phase in reflecting this has gone live on the site today. Although for the benefit of followers we have always displayed portfolio performance as if the member were fully invested (as institutional mutual funds do) , we know that many of our members make active asset allocation decisions with their cash. As such this addition should help better reflect the members' own performance.
The calculations for portfolio performance including cash still use Time Weighted Returns, rather than the Simple Return applied by the members broker. As we have written about previously on this blog, Time Weighted Returns are a better measure for comparison between individuals.
On the site you will see a new set of calculations, and an additional performance chart, that reflects the members exposure to cash (and cash equivalents). This is available on the members fact sheet via the drop down 'Cash and Equities', above the performance chart. You will also see an asset allocation chart on the members holding page. Cash includes both deposited cash as well as Money Market accounts and cash sitting in other currencies. We are applying a common interest rate to all cash instruments - the US 13 week treasury bill rate (IRX)
The first version of these changes on the site will only reflect performance including cash since 28th January of this year. From the middle of May we will be extending this, where available, to include up to 18 months of cash history. At that point we will also publish an additional set of rankings on the site (to show the best performing members when taking cash into account), and auto enable new members to have a view of performance with cash from inception.
There are a couple of disclaimers with the 'cash and equities' figures.We calculate the "Cash and Equities" performance by weighting the daily equity return with the daily cash return based on their respective daily balances. Since we cannot determine the exact time of day that new funds are available in your account we treat all funds as being available for the trading day that they are credited to your account. In some cases the funds may have been cleared outside trading hours and in those cases we may overestimate your exposure to cash for that day.
The cash and equities view is also not supported for all members. For some brokers, such as Fidelity Netbenefits, this data is not available, and if there are significant gaps in the data record from your broker your chart may not appear. Cash is not supported initially for members manually entering their trades.
For more information or help on the new figures check out the Cash Help Topic. We trust you will find this to be a valuable enhancement
In this week’s Economist there's an interesting article
discussing how “the rich have become disillusioned with the people who look
after their fortunes”. It quotes some
research carried out by Harrison Group that found that 63% of wealthy Americans
have lost faith in financial institutions and goes on to suggest that
accessibility of data and impartiality of advice has been the cause of this
breakdown of trust.
Later in the piece Stefan Jaecklin of Oliver Wyman is quoted saying that ‘the industry needs to move to a model where advice is being charged for and money flows are transparent’.
You can read the full article here.
We will be performing scheduled maintenance tomorrow morning at EDT 3:00am / GMT 8.00am.
This maintenance should take 30-45 minutes. During the maintenance www.covestor.com will not be available. We apologize for the inconvenience. Should you have any questions, please contact us.
If you hate average websites, have a designer's taste and a developer's skills, enjoy taking a vague idea and seeing it realized as a working site, are passionate about improving the Covestor user experience, as well as smart, creative and energetic, then you will enjoy working at Covestor!
Role
Front end developer / designer at Covestor.com (Central London, UK).
A full time office based role to help Covestor deliver its software projects to a high quality level.
Design web sites, modify existing pages, develop prototypes and integrate with our back end systems.
Work closely with the existing engineers and project manager to ensure deadlines are met.
Partially own the front end code base and suggest ways to improve its structure and modularity.
Attend bug review meetings where necessary and take ownership of front end bugs.
Experience / Skills
• 2+ years of recent design and development experience in a web
• environment - show us your sites.
• W3C CSS, HTML/XHTML, Javascript, optionally and ideally also ColdFusion.
• Familiarity with back end technologies such as SQL, so integrating web sites with them is smooth.
• Familiarity with development methods and how they apply in a light-weight, rapid turnaround engineering environment.
• Reasonable level of comfort with financial terms.
• Experience in a quality focussed organization.
Personal Attributes
• Design flair and excellent attention to detail.
• Enjoys technology and keeps up to date with the latest innovations.
• Good oral and written communication skills.
• Able to prioritise and work within tight time scales to meet deadlines.
• A self starter, able to make progress with minimal supervision.
• Can accept and act upon constructive criticism.
Covestor are seeking only passionate, energetic and ambitious individuals with the relevant experience, eligible to work in the UK and able to attend interviews in London.
Please reference URLs to examples of sites you have personally built and send your CV to jobs0409 [at] covestor.com
Please do not apply if you are not eligible to work in the UK or unable to attend an interview in London.
No agencies.
Tough times for everyone but looks like it is beginning to get particularly challenging for those overcharging, under performing funds. It was always bound to come, but given the recession investors are talking with their feet and the incumbents are beginning to find life difficult.
Two recent stories only go to highlight the challenges faced by the industry. Bloomberg is reporting huge job losses in Hedge funds and that a staggering 70% lost money in 2008:
About 920 hedge funds, or 12 percent, closed last year, according to data compiled by Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. Of the 6,800 single-manager funds that remain, 70 percent lost money in 2008, meaning they can’t resume collecting performance fees until the losses are recouped. Those fees, generally 20 percent of investment profits, are the primary source of cash used to pay bonuses.
In even more telling news the Supreme court has agreed to hear a case that will determine whether investors can blame a fund's advisers for excessive charges:
At its heart, the case speaks to the way fees are set across the mutual fund industry, and, depending on the court’s decision, could radically change how much shareholders pay in the future. “Millions of people invest in mutual funds,” said William Birdthistle, a professor of securities law at Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law. “This touches everyone.”
Covestor was established to bring transparency to the fund management industry, to enable ordinary investors to challenge the incumbents. That is becoming more of a reality daily and it is great to have you on the journey.
It continues to be a terrifying ride for anyone brave enough to be trading stocks in financials and yet the most bought and sold stocks on Covestor in the last month are still in financial services. Strong trading activity in Bank of America (BAC) and Citi (C) continues even with the growing risk of partial or complete nationalization.
There are some great posts on the site including:
We have also noticed a huge number of visitors to the site searching for strong opinions on the topic. Share your own views on the site of where you think this will all end.
This week's interview is with Covestor member Rita Mcquiston, aka Growthseeker. Rita is an active member of the AAII, regularly attending meetings in her home town of Portland. She has been trading for over 10 years based on IBD strategies, an approach that has seen her post an impressive 70% return since her inception on the site 6 months ago.
Rita focuses on the high growth momentum stocks recommended by IBD. She doesn't hold positions for long periods, looking for large liquid stocks that she can get out of quickly if the market turns.
In her interview Rita talks about some of the stocks she is looking at in today's market and the sectors of interest to her. She shares some of the books which have helped her to build her experience, a great set of recommendations for anyone starting out.
Rita juggles a busy work and family life with her an investing and is a great example of someone balancing active investment with everyday commitments . Right now she is short a number of tech stocks and although she doesn't have time to blog regularly is well worth following. As always you can find her interview on the top right hand side of her fact sheet.
We have been spending a fair amount of time recently going through feedback from our members, and prioritizing projects. We receive a number of great suggestions and are sorry for the delay getting them up on the website.
The enhancements over the last couple of months have largely been behind the scenes, but should make for a better experience. For example you may have noticed that page load times are now significantly faster. We have also re-architected the calculation of all of the portfolio metrics, and so although the measures themselves have not changed it will be easier to add new ones, and to cope with the growing number of users.
Here are some of the larger projects that you have been asking for and their status:
We are now monitoring your feedback on Get Satisfaction as well as through our support alias. We greatly value your input so please keep it coming!
We are looking for a freelance junior front end web developer with strong HTML/CSS skills to work with directly with our President on an exciting new project. We are based in Central London but some of the work can be completed remotely.
If you are a proficient web developer and available for a two to four week project please contact us with your CV and daily rate, referencing URLs to examples of sites you have personally built.
Please do not apply if you are not eligible to work in the UK or unable to attend an interview in London.
covestoritjobs {at} gmail [dot] com
NO RECRUITERS.
