that's a good insight. i also tend to think advice and sales should be done by separate parties. otherwise the advice won't be independent or bias-free.
Wasn't sure if it's ok to type "pray for my family" because I have no idea what will happen: Will it post to my FB timeline? No. Did it add me to a public directory of Shep users? Looks like it. No idea how to undo that.
Typed "show prayers" and saw a list of users who asked for a prayer. There wasn't much info though, and I didn't dare to click because again I didn't know what would happen. I don't want to send them automated messages for example.
Like you said it's interesting because you can end up interacting with other users via Shep. I guess the caution/downside is that people (like me) may be more hesitant to try features out if it can have interpersonal consequences.
IMHO it's definitely feasible. Takes a solid team for data collection, working with the interest groups, and app development. Real challenge is in the business side:
1. Is there big enough market for this?
2. Can you capture the right segment with your offering?
3. Can you come up with a logistics (trading, registration, taxes, certification...) for a streamlined and enjoyable user experience?
We've prototyped & want to build a multi-topic version where each customer can personalize their investing criteria. Wanted to address one topic as an experiment.
It's one of the highly requested features. We definitely want to add that in the future. My apologies for the inconvenience!
Here are two popular ways to get started:
1. Start with a template:
One way to get started is to scroll down on the homepage, pick one of the "lazy portfolios" and fork it.
For example, you can go to this Three-Fund Portfolio page https://hellomoney.co/portfolio/FsF71j, click "Save As," and tweak the percentages or amounts to your liking.
Although Bogleheads wiki is not the most friendly to beginners, pages like these may be useful for picking the % weights.
If you're in the situation where you need to construct a portfolio from a limited set of 401(k) funds, you can use Hellomoney to pick the funds and the weights.
Click "New Portfolio" on top of the page, delete the default fund (VFINX), and start entering the available funds in your 401(k) plan by name or symbol.
Not all funds may be available on Hellomoney, but you should be able to add a majority of them. (Generally speaking: if you don't see a symbol for the fund, it's not a publicly available fund, and you won't find it on Hellomoney.)
Then you can delete the funds that you're not interested in (high expense ratios for example), or "turn them off" by making their weights $0 or 0%. Here are a few examples:
As you change the weights, you can see the historical performance that the portfolio would have had in the past, including how much it would have lost/gained in the past crashes and boom times.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.
You can design portfolios from 24,000+ stocks and funds, and backtest it as you build it. Helps you understand how input (each holding) affects the output (historical performances) in a "build-to-think" way.
If you frequent finance/investing related parts of Reddit, you might have seen it. It's the official tool of /r/portfolios now.
Their sovereign fund is based on the fossil fuel, yet 1) their pension fund is divesting from fossil fuel 2) the sovereign fund has all kinds of ethical guidelines.
Anyone has come across the synthetic diamonds? I don't know much about how far along/well received they are, but Diamond Foundry sounds pretty interesting.
"Teenagers almost universally named Spotify as their preferred music-streaming service — and some teenagers said it was the best app on their phone overall."
Granted, it is not a large-scale study, but I am surprised there isn't a "Snapchat of music" or more contemporary app gaining steam. I expected music would be one of the first categories to be redesigned for today's teens/digital natives. Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Apple Music are all big incumbents now.
I'm aware HN doesn't have the highest regard for the finance industry, but I'd like to hear your perspective: What makes you not so proud of your current skills?
Kudos for their transparency. I hope this helps make it clear that the core value of doing a Kickstarter project is creating an engaged community of your fans, not making profit.
Mixing new and top posts in one view and make it more 'blind' has some aesthetical merits, I agree.
A tradeoff here is that you can lose a fairly significant amount of transparency and user control: Currently "new" and "front" are mapped to specific user intent (front = consume, new = curate). When you take away the ability to make explicit choices beyond some level, it could backfire.
Also, mixing them into one page is subject to controlling many variables (ratio of new vs. top, details of look and feel, etc.). I think it's worthwhile to look for a simpler approach first.