I confess to being a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to investing in the stock market. As a committed adherent of the efficient markets hypothesis (I know, I know, they haven’ t always looked that efficient recently) you can count me among those who find it hard to believe that any money manager can consistently beat the indices.

Add in the the high fees and lack of transparency that come with active managers, and it doesn’t seem that customers are well-served by this particular part of the financial services industry.

That’s what makes a site like Wealthfront interesting. If the web is the perfect medium for raising transparency and reducing distribution costs (and fees), then this is a good demonstration of how to go about it. Read more