North Carolina Investment Advisor Cited For Early Initiative On Giving Internet Investment Advice

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) November 7, 2011 -- Raleigh, N. C. and Chicago, Ill. InvestmentNews, a trade publication of Crain Communications, Inc., published a news story on the emerging business model of providing investment advice over the internet (October 30, 2011).

In her article entitled, “Personal Capital Ventures Into Online-advice Arena,” Lavonne Kuykendall reviewed how many investment advisors have been searching for a business model that would allow them to provide investment advice over the internet.

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North Carolina Investment Advisor Cited For Early Initiative On Giving Internet Investment Advice

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She noted that part of the complexity in finding the right model is lowering the price of investment advice to the scale of advice that online users are willing to pay.

Rob Foregger, founder of founders of Personal Capital Corp and co-founder of online-banking pioneer EverBank, said, “The next shift is from traditional advisory to next-generation financial advisers, from an offline advisory experience to one that is highly automated.”

Personal Capital Corp. raised $25 million in venture financing in August, 2011, from Institutional Venture Partners and Venrock, the former venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family to fund their new internet initiative.

Personal Capital offers individualized investment portfolio management through financial advisers who interact with clients online. The firm invests in exchange-traded funds and individual securities, which are managed for tax efficiency.

Kuykendall also reviewed the earlier business models at giving investment advice over the internet, including
Jim Clark’s 1999 company, myCFO Inc., and MyOwnFund, the online website created in 2006 by Thomas E. Vass, an investment advisor based in Raleigh, N. C.

MyOwnFund.com, offered investment advice customized to a client's goals and risk tolerance. It functioned like an “online customized mutual fund,” according to Vass, who said that the service never took off, because it “was just too early” for the market.

“I had imagined that if do-it-yourself investors were provided with all the tools to make their own decisions on building their own customized mutual fund, that they would subscribe to the website,” he said. Part of the problem, he noted was that early websites had not yet fully integrated the payment portal with the new user registration for their private accounts.

“I could envision how the investment website was supposed to work,” said Vass, “but I could not find the right software functionality back in 2006 to make it work in practice.”

Kuykendall noted that Vass believes the winning formula is going to be an online application that runs on mobile devices, much like free app Wikinvest Portfolio HD.

“I am continuing to develop the mobile application for investment advice, called “ITrakTech, said Vass, and I am also continuing to build out my private equity platform called The Private Capital Market to allow private technology companies and investors to manage online private offerings.”

About InvestmentNews: Since 1998, InvestmentNews has been delivering news and analysis essential to the business of financial advisers. Our weekly newspaper, which combines comprehensive news with accurate, independent reporting on the entire financial services industry, provides financial advisers with insight into the market unavailable in any other publication. Today, our readers have come to rely on InvestmentNews for up-to-date market information on the stories and events affecting their clients' investments, making us the number one source of news to the financial adviser community.

About Thomas E. Vass: Vass is fee-based investment portfolio manager located in Raleigh, N. C., and the author of Predicting Technology: Identifying Future Market Opportunities and Disruptive Technologies, (2007) which explains his theory of technology evolution and its effect on the economy. He is the holder of a patent on selecting technology stocks for investment accounts, which is based on his theory of technology. His research articles about technology were recently cited by The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) a global publishing platform for social scientists, as being in the top 3% of the most widely read in the world. Contact 919 975 4856

More information can be found online at http://www.technologystockadvisor.com

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