Sorry, but I don't see anyone using this ever. Managing money is mostly about making constituents feel comfortable and this does not. This doesn't strike me as the type of subject matter to do as a side-project or hobby.
I don't understand this kind of cynicism. As a financially literate individual, I think this is pretty cool and will probably give it a go at some point. What's more comforting than a locally hosted app in a vm you can tailor however you want? I certainly prefer that over handing all my financial data to some 'cloud' service.
I really don't like being critical but I think this is just kind of silly (at least for US citizens). For example, first survey question: are you "Interested in experiencing dramatic short term losses for better returns?". "Interested"? Really? "Dramatic"? Is that just unfortunate word choice or is this thing just not legit?
First of all, Betterment and Wealthfront are good companies. If "startups" concern you, check out Schwab's robo-advisor service or, better, get a Vanguard LifeStrategy fund.
What's even cooler, thought, is that this "dummy data" is loaded with fixtures. Meaning we can update it and next time you or I install wealthbot.io, no more poorly worded question!
Another gif - http://i.imgur.com/1QATMeC.gif
Finally, a quick note on robo advisors. These are great services, wealthbot.io doesn't compete with them. That being said, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Be weary of Schwab's portfolio suggestions, as the CEO of Wealthfront mentions in this article - https://medium.com/@adamnash/broken-values-bottom-lines-3d55...
That also makes me think this is a potential legal nightmare for RIAs using it. Those survey questions you see on other sites (and pretty much all the text on the page) has gone through a ridiculous amount of legal review before it goes live.
that would be true for any public-facing text, which relates to financial advice. a good CFA (RIA) knows what to ask and how to ask, it's not really that complicated.
1. please realize that this is an open source project, so every single line of text or code can be changed to your liking. (not to mention that these are simply sample questions, and any end-user can edit them to be as complex or simple as they like).
I can just as well ask your feeling about sky-diving and judge your risk tolerance based on that.
2. You have to understand the target audience. Today RIA's can pay lots of money to schwabs, fidelities, etc. Which have significant vendor lock-in and high up-front and maintenance costs, with open source RIA's have a choice they can build out a solution custom tailored to their needs using our platform. They are not locked into any specific security or cost basis. They can compete with robo-advisors without spending millions or hundreds of thousands on technology.
(btw, wanna build anther robo advisor, run many firms as SaaS or build an app like Acorns? .. you can do that too).
3. Finally you can try a portfolio consisting of S&P 500 only, another Vanguard LifeStrategy only, and something more complex... just for shits and giggles see whether you can do better or not.
(Wanna test a portfolio that is rebalanced vs non-rebalanced? You can do that.)
our platform is open-source alternative to costly closed-sourced solutions (this is not a new market, we are just giving users another choice)... like there are 100's of shopping carts out there, it's time for fintech to embrace some projects which cater to the masses, not only select few.
RIAs would be nuts to use this as it has gone through virtually zero legal/regulatory review. I dislike legal as much as the next guy but when it comes to managing other people's money, the legal/regulatory environment is exceedingly strict. You can't just pick up some random software off GitHub and start using it.
but whenever you implement any financial software, you go through the same audits. whether you paid $1M for it or got it for free.
you do realize that most banks run on open source platforms (linux). and there are countless magento installations out there?
to debate whether an open source alternative is viable to a closed-sourced model we'd have to travel back 20 years, when this debate was relevant.
and bashing free stuff, is like bashing free samples at the super market... feel free to move along.
Quite a bit different. There are very strict rules (in the US) about how RIAs, brokers, banks, etc can communicate with clients and prospective clients.
lots of people are using robo-advisors and RIA services... so i think that part is already proven.
now as far as webo specifically, if the community gets behind it.. this platform can be as secure, robust and feature-full as any fintech platform out there. btw, we are already pretty sophisticated. we spent quite a bit of time building a full fledged solution that has a plethora of popular features (from tax loss harvesting, to muni substitution, to various rebalancing methods and portfolio accounting)... so a lot is done, but a lot of help is also needed from community.
(magento anyone?)
not to mention our goal is to enable not only RIA's but also developers, by allowing them to create plugins (and possibly profit form it)...(again examples are magento/wordpress)
Need a connector to your favorite custodian? there's an app for that.
Need a more clever rebalancer? there's an app for that.
Need a new theme or improved workflow?
How bout additional ACH features?
our product is highly modularized so having developers hook into the system to expand on the core features is something that's more important to me personally than seeing if s&p 500 will outperform my personal EFT portfolio (which it hasn't ;)
