From the prespective of the follower, Covester helps by confirming that all trades are accurately reported and the rate of return being calculated is correct.  I think this is an excellent option for people who don’t have the time to do the research and monitor their portfolio.  The follower only has to pay a fee when the traders’ portfolio makes them money.  It is a win-win for both the trader and follower.  The potential risk associated with this is that the trader can lose all your money.  But what makes the trader more trusting is that Covester is acting as the third party auditer and shows you their true trading and return history.  The trader can futher instill confidence in their followers by explaining their rationale for a particular trade on their Covester profile.  They also have the option of keeping a blog in which they can dicuss their strategy and views on how to deal with current market conditions.

I think Covester knocks down the barriers to investing by hoooking up potential “hedge fund” managers with potential investors, no matter how much money is involved or what your background is.  Other great features include the ability to network with other investors, ask succesful investors questions, track your own preformance against other top traders, and widgets you can place on your website to show off your portfolio performance.  The only grip I have about Covester is that I have been having a problem hooking up my account to my Zecco brokerage.  I think this techincal issue may be limited to Zecco, as it seems that Covester works for most other major brokerages.

My Covester Widget:

Free monthly credit score.  It is ad supported.  One disclaimer is that you have to give our your social security number to credit karma so then can get a score.  If you are comfortable with giving out your social security number, then this is great site to get up to date credit score.  You can check when ever you want and get up to date score.  Credit Karma will then graph your credit score form month to month.  Credit Karma is an ad supported website and makes money by recomending services but does not share any of your personal information.

Helps you track your finances.  Basically puts your finances on auto pilot.  Downloads data from your banks and auto categorizes your purchases.  Mint does a pretty decent job of categorizing purchases.  You may have to help it along and correct purchases it categorized wrong, but after a week or two, it is good to go.  From there you can view your spending habits in cool graph and bar charts.  It allows you to drill down on your purchases and compare between months or years.  A useful feature is the budget alerts you can setup for any category of spending.  You can have mint automatically text you when you are about to or have gone over your budget.  They way mint makes money is it looks at your purchasing habits and offers ways to save money based upon sponsored companies.  Mint does not share any of your personal information to companies.

A micro lending site.  Hooks lenders up with borrowers, with the goal of cutting out the middle man (the bank).  Lenders are able to get higher interest rates for their money and borrowers get lower rates on borrowing.  Prosper itself makes money by taking 1% of the money that the lender makes on interest.  The real strength of this site is the ability to split up your loans in increments as small as $50 dollars.  That way you don’t have all your eggs in one basket and have to worry about one person defaulting.  They will even recalculate your earnings based upon statistical data of how many people default at prosper.  Since Prosper has opened up their API, there are many programs and sites out there that let you do more advanced charting of your current and future earnings.

Stock trading site.  As long as you have $2,500 in your account (traded or in cash) you get 10 free trades a month.  Great for the occasional stock traders.  While Zecco lacks in certain services from sites such as Scott Trade or Share Builder such as analysis of current earnings and getting research data, you can’t beat 10 free trades a month.  Zecco does have many of the same services as the bigger Stock Trading sites, but it comes at a premium cost.  Zecco also makes money by putting up ads on its site.  Another cool feature of Zecco is thier online community.  If you choose to join the community, you will have to share the stocks you have bought and sold to everyone.  But at the same time, everyone in the community does this.  You can discuss stock tips and advice, and ask each other questions about why they bought or sold certain stocks.

Update: Zecco has decided to increase the minimum amount you need in your account to $25,000 in order to recieve the 10 free trades a month.