Online Trading

It's almost like a game. I'm on Kapitall.com playing around with $100,000 dollars and investing in everything I would ever want to. This seems like a great way to get people involved in being active investors because it is fun! I am a big proponent of making the right things fun to do, I think that's what sustainability is ultimately all about. Here's a screenshot:

The little stacks of cards are the available portfolios that others have created. There is a ticker at the bottom, your portfolio value at the top left, and many other cool tools that help you make informed investment decisions.

I would love to adapt an investment trading platform like this as a local community investment tool. The businesses from the area could report some metrics about their revenue generation, employment, environmental performance, and social justice impact to a database that would feed into a graphic user interface. Users could then get on there to "buy" and trade businesses in their neighborhood and local community. Over time these citizen-investors could see how well their community was doing and how well their specific portfolio was doing when marked against their peers. The development of something like this would certainly be long and costly, but imagine how cool it could be...