Blog

Following on from our recent post about sharing your trades on Twitter, you can now also keep track of all member commentary by following Covestors' own feed on Twitter!

The feed contains the commentary that members are posting to the site, highlighting the member name, the associated stock (if there is one) and the title of the post. Use the feed to keep track of ideas as members are sharing them on the Covestor site. You can then click through to view their portfolio performance.

The feed is available at http://twitter.com/covestor. We look forward to seeing you there.

I've been sitting on my hands for the last couple of months during this period of market volatility thinking I should have greater exposure to energy and commodities etc., but not actually having the courage to dive into the market.  This is what makes me a poor investor, not least when I see some of the guys on Covestor who have been performing fantastically during this volatile period.

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...

Today we announced the close of our Series A funding led by Union Square Ventures (USV) and Spark Capital. They are joined by one of Europe's leading technology investors, Amadeus Capital Partners. Between them these firms have over $2 billion under management.

This a great news for the team here and for all of our members. It will allow us to build out our asset management platform, enabling users to invest alongside the brilliant self-directed investors on the site, rather than in expensive managed funds.

We have already been hugely impressed by the individuals who have joined us. Todd Dagres of Spark, and Albert Wenger of USV have joined our board of directors, Anne Glover of Amadeus has joined as a board observer. We chose to work with them as they share the passion of the team here at Covestor. A big thanks to them, and to all of our friends on the site.

I always find it a dilemma as to when best cut loose stocks which are performing badly in my portfolio, not least in such volatile markets.  However, today I've decided to sell my positions in 4 stocks - Alcoa, Boeing, Logitech and Sprint - in order to free up some cash in my portfolio should I identify any perceived bargains.

Only LOGI returned a small profit, with AA and BA just under water.  However, Sprint has been one of the poorer performers in my portfolio where I have crystalized a significant loss.

I continue to hold some other poor performers, namely Advanced Micro Devices, AMEX and Marsh & McLennan.  I only hope I don't regret not exiting these today too as well as taking some profits from my best performer Amazon.

We have overhauled the commentary on Covestor to allow you to keep track better of all of your investment decisions in a single blog - you can also automatically import posts from your external blog.  These new features will make it easier for you to maintain a historic record of your thinking, and for others to follow and respond to your analysis.  More details on the Covestor Blog.

Mark Hulbert wrote a column in the New York Times this weekend highlighting a recent study finding that individual stocks perform better or worse based on the various months of the year. GE's best month is December and its worst month is February.

http://www.seekingalpha.com/article/54970-a-study-in-stock-seasonality-general-electric

With crude rising above $99 on worries of inadequate winter supplies, I think XOM is one to watch.

Sold to realize a healthy gain.

It's a little embarrassing writing a rationale for MMC when I bought some stock a few months ago near its 2 year high and now it's just above its 52 week low - how do I explain that one away?! Well thanks to a rationale request from bobsadvice - http://www.covestor.com/mbr/bobsadvice, who's picked out my worst performer to date, I have to give some kind of explanation. And that's one of great things about Covestor - as all about it's real trades, I can't hide away from the fact I bought what is currently a dog, even if it is only just over 2% of my portfolio. So back to my rationale. Back in May, I was looking to for some exposure to Financial Services - I had none at that time - and with three leading brands - Marsh (insurance brokerage), Kroll (risk consulting) and Mercer (investment services) - MMC was a stock with an interesting mix of diverse businesses that I thought would be a good long term investment. I'm keeping it in my portfolio in the hope of recovering some of my losses. As its overall exposure in my portfolio is low, it shouldn't impact my overall portfolio performance greatly.