Risk/reward in virtual financial communities

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Mainelli, Michael

Affiliations: Z/Yen Limited, 5-7 St Helen's Place, London EC3A 6AU, UK. Tel.: +44 207 562 9562; E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: Virtual communities in finance range from informal networks of people helping each other, e.g., Motley Fool chat rooms, through to sophisticated services such as Paypal or credit derivative exchanges. The key issue in finance (as in many other web areas) is “trust”. Trust goes beyond security or payment into areas such as confidence, probabilistic forecasts or guarantees. Real financial communities are exploring a wide variety of technologies as community interaction moves online.

Keywords: Finance, communities, trust, risk/reward

DOI: 10.3233/ISU-2003-23102

Journal: Information Services & Use, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 9-17, 2003