Spacetime Industries, a technology company specializing in financial services, has launched a new iOS application called Robinhood. The idea is that those that are involved or interested in the stock market can use the app to receive “timely” news, quotes, and community sentiment that’s relevant to their portfolio.
Through Robinhood, users can create recommendations on whether a particular stock should be bought or sold and the app takes those and benchmarks it against the market price. As a result, it produces a score that will help evaluate how good that person is at investing. Don’t think of it like a Klout score or something you’d get when you’re using Empire Avenue.
It’s important to note that this app will not be providing anyone with inside information about particular stocks or company performance.
The app also has a geolocation aspect to it whereby it will pinpoint a user’s location and share relevant stocks around the area. Since I’m in San Francisco, it might display quotes for Zynga, Intuit, Bank of America, Facebook, and others.
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When you browse through the app and find a particular stock you like, Robinhood makes it possible to store that quote in a wishlist. Once done, the app will display relevant news items related to that stock, pulling from more than 10,000 sources to help give you a complete picture about its performance.
But the score does introduce an interesting game dynamic to get people to compete. I know for me, when I first took an Economics course in high school, one of the interesting things was having a stock market competition to see who could earn the most. In essence, Robinhood is recreating that competitive feeling, but without the “in real life” financial risk.
Spacetime Industries believes that when independent investors have a platform where they can crowdsource their ideas, they can produce returns that are “superior than even the best of the individuals.” The company has worked with MIT Media Lab and Stanford University’s Economics department to help accomplish their mission — being able to ensure that stock recommendations arrive at the right time to the community.
The application is free right now, but in the future, the company says that it plans on implementing a premium set of features.
Photo credit: STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images
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