Moneyvidya.com: Where anyone can be an analyst — and get paid, too

Frustrated with those talking heads spouting stock recos?

Think you can do better with advice of your own?

What if someone’s ready to pay for it?

Cut to Gautam Kshatriya, formerly of Ernst & Young in London.
The twenty-something youngster quit his job in October 2007, frustrated by the financial world’s instability.

His big idea? How about a system of market analysis that would help investors shield themselves from such recurring crises?
The concept appealed to former colleague Alex Frankl, and the duo set sail for India as the financial crisis deepened in 2008.

In a couple of months, they launched www.moneyvidya. com, a site where analysts and investors could discuss matters related to shares and where investors could rate and rank the best of them.
The website also lets every investor act as an analyst.

Members can look for stock recommendations by professionals and, at the same time, post views on the current market situation and specific shares.

The performance record of each analyst on the website is continuosly assessed using a a number of yardsticks including profitability, reliability and risk.

Separately, if you like a particular analyst, you can opt for just his latest takes realtime.

Among the top five analysts on moneyvidya is Satyam Gupta, an independent financial planner.

“An equity analyst, whether short-term or long-term, can prove and make a name for himself on the site. It also helps that the concept is new and is currently free of charge,” Gupta said.

The beta or test version of the website has already attracted 15,000 members.

The service is currently free but the company has plans to launch a paid version in the next couple of months, with a portion of the revenue to be shared with the top performing analysts.

There are incentives for analyst featuring at the top of the rankings. On June 2, moneyvidya rewarded its top analyst on the site a prize money of Rs 1 lakh.

The fees to access the site can be expected to be around Rs 1,000 per quarter, said Kshatriya, but investors don’t mind paying, he said.

“To date the performance of moneyvidya’s top analysts is for anyone to see. As of June 1, the top 5 analysts included one day trader, three short term traders and one investor. These analysts alone have a success rate of close to 80% and have on average beaten the Nifty index by over 4% per month consistently.” said Kshatriya, who’s moneyvidya’s CEO.

The track record of analysts can be viewed at any point in time and the owners claim to personally verify the authentication of details mentioned by analysts on the site to shield investors from frauds.