Israeli company TipRanks has launched a new online tool that aggregates and rates digitally published stock recommendations with the goal of helping individual investors make more informed decisions.
The TipRanks application, which is free to download, was developed by Uri Gruenbaum, a software engineer, after he became frustrated with losing money online by following bad stock-picking advice.
Currently in beta mode, the new “financial accountability engine” aggregates digitally published stock recommendations and ranks more than 5,000 analysts by performance. The goal is to give individual investors a platform to see the success rates of analysts’ stock recommendations.
“Our mission is to help protect the individual investor from underperforming financial experts and to hold analysts accountable for their recommendations,” said Gruenbaum.
He said that the platform provides transparency by rating the return of each analyst recommendation and outperformance record while also comparing the analyst expertise to higher ranking analysts.
When TipRanks is downloaded, the app works within your browser. This means that TipRanks opens up a display window any time one is viewing financial text that references an analyst the platform follows.
Users can highlight the name of an analyst on a web page, prompting TipRanks to open an ‘accountability report’ that gives access to the analyst’s advice and overall prediction rating.
The online platform also allows users to search by stock to get advice on a particular investment.
Gruenbaum set up the company, which he said is not affiliated with any investment firm, in 2012.
Stock market display image via Shutterstock