Copycat - Mirror Trading Takes Off (Got a brain? You too could be a star)

 If you are a discerning customer searching for stock advice, you might ask yourself. What the hell is Covestor?  The site, betabeat reports, run out of London and New York, has been around since 2007, and allows “self-directed” investors to broadcast their trades online.  The site requires users—small-time, independent professionals as well as guys at home in their bathrobes watching E*TRADE on two monitors—to connect their online brokerage accounts or submit audited records. Every trade, bad or good, is posted online. In other words, it’s oversharing for traders.

A few years ago, Covestor pivoted to emphasize an even weirder business: mirror trading. In addition to merely watching founder Mr. Sykes make millions from his Columbus Circle apartment, one can share the wealth by automatically mirroring his moves. Just as television made celebrities out of Jim Cramer and other prognosticators with good cadence, Covestor hopes to make stars out of any old schmucks who prove they can beat the Street.

The Boston-based research firm Aite Group named “copy trading” one of the top ten trends in wealth management in a 2012 report, perhaps because Covestor is just one of many companies allowing such investing. Los Angeles-based Ditto Trade launched in 2010. Currensee, eToro and other sites support mirror trading for currency traders…..

Read more at http://www.betabeat.com/2012/05/07/follow-the-money-on-covestor-copycat-traders-buy-sell-and-hold-automatically-as-mirror-trading-takes-off/