Covestor and CVIM Blog

Weekly Member Interview: Sean Hannon

    This week's Wall Street Transcript interview is with RIA and Covestor member Sean Hannon. Sean runs an Investment advisory firm, Epic LLC, and has 10 years financial services experience working for Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. EPIC pursues four main investment strategies, Merger Arbitrage, Asset Allocation, Market Timing and Volatility.

Sean is a deep value investor and filters from about 150 companies in search of hidden value. In his interview he talks about some of the stocks currently fulfilling his criteria, along with his broader investment strategy.

Sean claims that over the past 10 years his clients have recieved annual returns of 23% with volatility that is much lower than the S&P 500. As many of you will know he is currently the top performer on Covestor by Annualized Sharpe Ratio, as well as being the third most followed member, and looking at his performance on the site it is hard to argue with his exceptional results.

You can find his interview posted alongside his verified performance on the top right hand site of his fact sheet.

Covestor Partners: Bivio.com

Over the coming weeks we will be announcing a number of partnerships which will both enhance the offering on the site but also raise the profile of our members across the web. The first of these is with leading Investment Club software provider  Bivio.com

Bivio is a powerful web-delivered application which enables groups of individual investors to create and manage their own investment clubs online. It provides a leading automatic accounting solution for Investment Clubs including daily valuation, performance reports and a club IRS tax return. Bivio is also a partner of BetterInvesting the nation's largest non-profit organization dedicated to Investment Education.

We are delighted to be working with Bivio and extend a warm welcome to all of its members from Covestor  (such as The Mad Loot Investment Club) Look out for more announcements shortly…

Weekly Member Interview: Don Bartell

This weeks interview is with Covestor member Don Bartell. Don has been investing for over 35 years and is now actively managing his portfolio with a view to his retirement.

A former commodities broker, and a great character, Don uses detailed statistical analysis to make investment decisions. In his interview he gives further insight into his sytem and shares his view on opportunities in precious metals.

Over the last month or so Don has significantly outperformed his chosen benchmark, the Russell 2000, doing a great job navigating these choppy times. You can find his interview alongside his performance on the top right hand side of his factsheet.

Happy thanksgiving everyone!

New Feature: Stock Watchlists

A number of you sent us feedback that you would value seeing what other members are watching and why, before the trades hit their account, so today we have added a stock watchlist for each member.  The watchlist lets you track the performance of stocks you are interested in and solicit feedback from the community on your ideas.

To add items to your watchlist, simply click on the link on your watchlist page or add the stock from any of the individual stock pages on the site. When you add a stock you will be asked to share a target buy or sell (if you have one) along with the thesis for why you are watching it. When you remove an item from your watchlist it will be added to prior watchlist items so that you can keep tracking its performance.

Watching stocks gives actionable information to both you and you followers. If the stock price falls below the target buy price, or above the target sell, it will be highlighted so that you can see that there is a recommended trade. Unlike any other watchlist on the web you can also see the five latest trades in each of the stocks you are watching, and roll over to see the performance of the members who have made these trades.

Your watchlist is shared with all members on the site who are able to rate your watchlist ideas. As well as giving you feedback this will help people to find you as we will highlight shortly the most recent and highest rated ideas on the site. We hope you will find this new feature of benefit, and as always keep the feedback coming.

Flash New Charts

Today we have put live new Flash driven charts, which you will see on all member's fact sheets.

As well as being faster than the old charts - the new ones allow users to select the time period they are interested in, and to view the actual data points as you roll over the chart.

We know how popular comparing performance is between members. Let us know if there are further areas you would like to see the charts improve.

Weekly Investor Interview: Eric Wolff

This weeks Wall Street Transcript interview is with Covestor member Eric Wolff. Eric is a young investor who runs a family office and was cited in our recent BusinessWeek coverage.

Eric is the author of popular stock blog Research Intensive Investing and is an active member of both Value Investors Forum and contributor to Seeking Alpha.

In his interview, which you can find on the top right hand side of his fact sheet, he talks about his investment focus and shares some examples of recent stocks that have caught his attention.

Weekly Member Interviews With The Wall Street Transcript: This Week Robert Freedland

We are delighted to announce that starting today we are publishing a weekly series of in depth member interviews, in partnership with the Wall Street Transcript. The Wall Street Transcript typically interview professional money managers and CEOs – this is the first time they are covering self-directed investors. The series is part of our ongoing commitment to level the playing field between individual investors and pros.

Each interview will be posted to the members Fact Sheet, and will also be available via The Transcript. They provide insight into the investing backgrounds and strategies of proven individual investors, and should give viewers of a member's investment record a better sense of the people behind the numbers.

This week's interview is with Robert Freedland, a popular stock blogger at Stock Picks Bob’s Advice. Freedland has been investing for over 40 years and has "a common sense approach" to his investments. He has had an 11.5% return on his portfolio since its inception on Covestor back in June.

You can read his interview by opening the PDF file from the top right hand side of his Fact Sheet.