stock market

Upsido Targets Nordic Stock Investors

Upsido is a Danish startup providing a web application for Nordic private investors that focus on fundamental analysis, as opposed to fast and real-time day-trading.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_analysis
Upsido claims to offer the most comprehensive and fastest updated and most accurate financial information, tools, and news on Nordic public companies, to allow private investors to make sounder long-term investment decisions and track the performance.
Upsido have recognized a global trend of banking customers losing confidence in their bank’s investment advices. The firm’s service is built around the message of saving money by quitting investment advices from your current bank, and doing stock analyses both faster and more efficiently on your own on their web service – with better decisions. UPSIDO.com covers around 1,000 stocks in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, and aims to expand their service and customer base to the whole of Nordic.
The users of Upsido’s service have access to different tools such as screening, comparison, sector risk, fundamental ratings, etc. There is a free service offering Stock Overview, Financial News, Portfolio, and Watchlist features, but the more interesting and advanced functions are behind a monthly subscription fee of around 9 EUR (or 13 USD). The unique “UPSIDO Rating” is also only available to paid users. It is a ratio, which aims to convey the overall fundamental strength of a company from calculating ratios such as historical P/E, P/B, EV/EBITDA, dividend yield, sales growth, EPS growth, etc. etc., and that way help investors quickly sort out the best firms.
The firm was founded in late 2007. The CEO Peter Garnry explains that in the beginning, Upsido first tried the B2B route, providing a web application through the Internet bank solutions of all major banks. They managed to get five larger banks in Denmark close to signing a contract, but then after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt everything halted. After revising their strategy, Upsido decided to distribute the service directly to consumers/investors. It was a tough change, but the firm survived and is now experiencing nice growth rates, Peter comments. The firm has some customers in Sweden and Norway already, but in 2010, Upsido is looking to really penetrate the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish markets, utilizing partnerships like The Danish Shareholder Association, online broker E*Trade, and business newspaper Dagbladet Børsen in Denmark.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagbladet_B%C3%B8rsen
http://www.arcticindex.com/people/208

UPSIDO logoUpsido is a Danish startup providing a web service for Nordic private investors that focus on fundamental analysis. Upsido claim to offer the most comprehensive, quickly updated, and accurate financial information, tools and news on Nordic public companies. The service aims to allow private investors to make sounder long-term investment decisions and track their portfolio performance.

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AktieTwits.dk Trying To Unite Tweeting Nordic Stock Investors

AktieTwits.dk logoAktieTwits.dk is a new Danish service for Nordic professional and private stock investors sharing investment tips or seeking stock information on Twitter. The idea is to bring all information flows together and structure the content, with the aim to ease real time monitoring of the market. AktieTwits is taking on the traditional message boards and media sites by aggregating real time instant messaging, to allow one feel “almost like standing on the tradingfloor,” as the founder Jens Davidsen puts it.

AktieTwits mobile screenshotThe service is integrated with Twitter, meaning one can start participating in the AktieTwits community just by signing in to one’s Twitter account. AktieTwits.dk uses own custom tags to catch users’ Twitter tweets: “$$” for general market comments, and for example “$CARL-B”, “$DANSKE” for comments on individual stocks. The site also shows all links to popular and related sites, including Youtube, Flickr, Jyskebank.TV, and own stock charts, as embedded content. In addition, AktieTwits offers also deeper information including stock quotes, charts, company data, and analyzing and screening tools for following the market on a daily basis. The website also has a good mobile version working with iPhone, Android, and Nokia Nseries handsets.

The service is not exactly a unique one, but could be successful if found useful by the local active investors. I would guess, though, that majority of them are focusing on home country trading with only partly attention to international markets, and thus also preferring to interact in their native language. Also, one might question selection of the domain name if indeed the service is targeted for pan-Scandinavian use. So far there are not that many features encouraging the community interaction either.

Anyway, there is for example a well-known Finnish investor magazine’s online forum in which discussion on daily topics flows actively. Many of the comments are quite short, and could well be expressed instead in microblogging style in a service like AktieTwits. Considering you first need to begin and learn using Twitter is an additional hurdle in adoption, though.