This is obviously a giant market. The big banks are in the game, Schwab, E-trade, Quicken, Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, The Street.com, even Wallstrip :) .

Lately, there has been a ton of activity. Obviously, smart entrepreneurs think that the holy grail of web finance remains out there. Fred discusses some of the players and his investments this morning .

I have always thought that to get community, you need to separate church and state…meaning keep the transactions (brokerage) away the community. Maybe that will never happen as the Yahoo message boards have proved. The shills will just show up wherever they have to.

I am betting otherwise. The new tools of the web are making it easier to add conversation and layers of trust while blocking out spammy stock promotion. My hedge fund has investments in two of them, Covestor.com and MyTrade.com (Biltmore also an investor). I am a jockey guy and love what Rikki , Andy and Landon Swan are working towards. Hopefully they only listen to the stuff that I am right about :) .