So much investment advice, so little time (and money). There's many personal investment advisors online now using analytics to give cookie-cutter advice. The upside to these online services is the promise of greater transparency and a consolidated "pane of glass" view of your accounts across multiple brokers or institutions. I think those promises are valuable for self-driven (or un-managed) investing, even if they can't replace a professional personal investor.
I wanted to compare these "online advisors" side by side. My comparison is based on (my) typical use of their interfaces and it's been an enlightening review. After each of them sucked in my investement accounts, it was visually obvious which ones were differentiators. I list each advisor's 6 month returns for my personal investments -- not for bragging rights -- to indicate that some large variances exist even in the "hard" numbers. This makes any of their numbers or advice suspect, so buyer beware.
From the chart below, it's pretty clear to me that I'll be keeping PersonalCapital around. Openfolio has a nifty crowdsourcing type of approach that will be fun to watch too.
| Advisor | 6mon Return Sample | Advice Sample | Big Differentiators | Worst Detractors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SigFig | 9.7% | buy bonds, sell high expense ratio position | manage accounts (free upto $10k) | short performance analysis (1yr) |
| FutureAdvisor | 9.4% | buy bonds, buy US stock | manage accounts (paid service) | short performance analysis (6mon), no mobile app |
| NextCapital | 9.4% | not offered | long performance analysis (start of holdings), calculates α (paid service), calculates account and holding fees / taxes (paid service), discloses algorithm for calculating returns**, granular asset class differentiation*** | no personalized advice or management service, no mobile app |
| Personal Capital | 11.5%* | buy US stocks, sell international stock | connects to P2P accounts*, historical performance extrapolation back to 1992, calculates account and holding fees / taxes, granular asset class differentiation***, multi-factor authentication | |
| Openfolio | 9.8% | increase Sharpe ratio, sell high expense ratio positions | compare to other investor porfolios | short performance analysis (Jan '14), no mobile app |
* PersonalCapital can calculate performance including P2P lending returns
** https://www.nextcapital.com/pdfs/return_calculation_details_linked_daily_return.pdf
*** examples: PersonalCapital differentiates international bonds from US bonds, NextCapital & PersonalCapital differentiate industry type
