The first main session at Money:Tech was a panel discussion
on “Open Source Finance,” with James Altucher from Stockpipckr, Graham Miller
from Marketcetera, and Steve Bate from FOLIOfn.
Aside from the intrigues of open source development, what was most interesting
was the idea of open source research.
- Individuals
are contributing to the overall wealth of data available to the entire
investing community, adding transparency to the process.
- Hedge
fund returns are decreasing because data that used to be proprietary is now a
commodity - they no longer have a monopoly on investment-grade information.
- The
power of Web 2.0-style investing is the ability to pull different pieces of
information together from different sources.
For the user, they get a variety of different types of data (news, quotes,
community perspective). At Zecco we for
instance have partnerships with The Motley Fool and PredictWallStreet so that
for each quote lookup the corresponding CAPS rating and prediction widget are
displayed. Great examples of working together to provide a wealth of information.
- Proprietary
data gives companies an advantage. In
the case of Zecco, this is the verified account data shared by our users (trading,
positions, and performance data).
We continue to be encouraged as we hear the discussions here
at the conference, and we can’t wait to hear what other companies are saying.