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If you don’t have the money to hire a financial adviser for investment advice, you may turn to the internet to find information on stocks.  Wikinvest hopes that their site will be the one that you use.

Wikinvest works in the same way as Wikipedia: anonymous users provide information in order to share with web visitors.  The site will provide stock charts with notes in order to help the average person understand them.  Additionally, opinions will be given on whether to buy or sell particular stocks and give information about each traded company. 

The drawback of the Wikinvest website?  Who knows if the information is valid?  It would prove very easy for an anonymous user to give bad advice in order to move stocks in a way that would be advantageous for them.  As a way to prevent this from happening, Wikinvest will require that writers cite supporting evidence to their claims.  If a contributor does make false claims about a company, that person could be subject to prosecution.  However, the saying, “a fool and his money are soon parted” was created for a reason.

The biggest issue Wikinvest has to face is trust.  Financial advisors do well because they are trusted by their clients.  Wikinvest users may not want to trust the information provided there on the simple grounds that no one is taking credit for it.  There is little incentive to put good info there and far too much incentive for info with nefarious purposes.

Read: [NY Times]