Has Technology Changed the Investment World?

Thanks to advances in digital technologies, ordinary people around the world are now able to trade far more easily across many different sectors. Business associates used to find it hard to negotiate deals, and investors in most cases had to actually meet the people they were investing with. Time zone differences impeded phone communications, but nowadays everyone can communicate instantly and at very little cost. Let’s take a look at some of the ways in which technology has impacted the world of investments.

Better connectivity

The internet has multiplied investment opportunities and enabled businesses around the globe to easily gain investors. The M1 Group is just one example of an enterprise investment firm that has leveraged the new tools that have become available to build its investors a worldwide lucrative portfolio. Najib Mikati - Vice Chairman of the Board of Investcom LLC – is the leader of the M1 Group, an organization created to diversify Investcom’s investments and allow investors to see outstanding returns on their dollars.

Investment diversity

Investors no longer find themselves stuck with the more common sorts of investments. Companies such as the M1 Group have opened up a brave new world of diverse opportunities, allowing investors to make investments with just the one holding company, while retaining the risk protection that comes with having a diverse spread of investment stock. It also means that it’s quick, cheap and easy to get in touch with your investment company over the internet to make investment decisions and monitor portfolio performance.

A range of investment tools

Tools such as Personal Capital allow investors to link any type of investment account, including taxable and retirement accounts, and then track fees, allocation and performance at the click of a mouse. Graphs make it child’s play to understand asset allocation and compare indexed returns.

There are many excellent investment tracking tools out there that anyone can use to keep tabs on their portfolio. Morningstar, for instance, allows you to robustly evaluate your investments once you’ve entered the portfolio data, and makes its entire battery of industry leading tools available to monitor investment costs, performance and make comparisons based on the different indices.

Even a deceptively simple tool like Google Finance, with its free portfolio tracker, can be an invaluable tool for monitoring all sorts of investments on a daily basis. What it lacks in frills it more than makes up for in sheer simplicity and ease of use. You enter your portfolio manually or upload it in a choice of formats, and then Google will proceed to track performance daily as well as deliver overall performance reports.

The investment opportunities that have come with better communications have opened up a whole world of possibilities for small as well as corporate investors. Investment companies and professional advisors offer better services too, because in today’s connected global economy, acquiring a poor reputation can quickly spiral into a huge loss of business. This effectively forces firms to do their level best for investors.