bivio Launches Online Service For Investment Clubs

Website automates accounting and collaborative functions for group investing, opening the door for new communities of online investors to form investment clubs

BOULDER, CO (December 8, 1999) bivio™ has launched a free Web-based service that facilitates group investing by enabling group members to meet, make decisions and manage their investment clubs online. Located at www.bivio.com, the service is designed for new communities of online investors as well as the 730,000 people who are active in more than 35,000 investment clubs already in existence.

Making a quantum leap over chat-based investment sites, bivio.com makes it easy for online investors not currently involved in group investing to leverage their savings by pooling their assets and knowledge in private investment clubs. The site helps individual investors find others interested in forming a club, supplies the tools to administer group efforts, and provides a command center where members can collaborate, vote and track investment discussions over the Web.

bivio.com also enables existing investment clubs to quickly transition from cumbersome PC-based administration to an integrated Web-based system offering 24-hour member access and continuous feature upgrades. This eliminates hours of administrative work every month and allows members to track portfolio performance on a daily basis.

"The Internet has created a revolution in investing, and bivio takes that to the next level by enabling groups of friends, co-workers or family members to experience the benefits of group investing on the Web," said Ion Yadigaroglu, co-founder and CEO of bivio. "We transform online investing into a collaborative activity with the potential for greater returns."

Each participating club creates a private space on the website. bivio.com then simplifies the process of doing club accounting, tracking portfolio values, preparing taxes, making collaborative investment decisions and disseminating current information to members. Specific services include:

Free accounting. The club treasurer or another designated member can enter member contributions, trades, interest payments and other transactions in the accounting section of the club’s private site. The system automatically records stock splits and most dividends through a data feed that tracks the daily performance of all U.S. stocks. The data is always current and available at any time. Existing clubs can easily import their investment data from their PC-based software.

Portfolio and member reports. In addition to tracking the performance of a club as a whole, bivio.com enables individual members to review their accounts at any time simply by clicking on their respective names. They can view all transactions related to themselves, including payments, withdrawals and expenses, as well as percentage ownership.

Daily data updates. All reports on bivio.com incorporate closing prices from the previous business day, enabling club members to monitor their investment performance on a daily basis. This eliminates the need to wait for monthly updates and relieves the club treasurer of the need to calculate values manually.

Message posting and archiving. Each club has a private message board where members can post announcements. E-mail sent through bivio.com is automatically posted on the board and archived by topic for easy reference. bivio.com also automatically distributes e-mail to all club members and allows e-mail attachments to be posted on the board.

Document sharing (available December 20). bivio.com permits documents to be uploaded to the club "library," making it possible to post meeting minutes, club bylaws, interesting articles about investing and other relevant material in a central spot for easy retrieval.

"Our club has been trying to figure out how to keep everyone informed of club activities on a timely basis, and bivio is the ideal way to solve the problem," said James Babalitis, who belongs to an investment club in Washington, D.C. "It not only makes it easier for members to communicate, but the fact that it posts closing prices every day is a major advantage. Under our present system of issuing monthly reports, everyone is basically one month behind; with bivio, everyone can be up to date every day."

bivio is a privately held company headquartered in Boulder, CO.