Offering Free Investment Advice by Anonymous Volunteers

Would you trust a Web site created by anonymous individuals to give you better advice on stocks than professional advisers? Wikinvest hopes so.

Following the model of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikinvest is building a database of user-generated investment information on popular stocks. A senior at Yale writes about the energy industry, for example, while a former stockbroker covers technology and a mother in Arizona tracks children’s retail chains.

Wikinvest, which recently licensed some content to the Web sites of USA Today and Forbes, seeks to be an alternative to Web portals that are little more than “a data dump” of income statements and government filings, said Parker Conrad, a co-founder...

New York Times: Offering Free Investment Advice by Anonymous Volunteers