New service to mine Internet for financial investing gems

An online service set for launch early next year will perpetually mine the Internet for gems useful to sophisticated financial investors, the company said.

A specialized search engine christened “Monitor110″ promises to continually sift and sort information from nearly 40 million online sources to uncover business trends or developments before word reaches mainstream media.

“It can monitor alternative news websites, government websites, regulatory sites, blogs, union websites, local newspapers,” Monitor110 chairman Roger Ehrenberg told AFP.

“It looks at the type of people linking to the blog and the people that link to the people that link to the blog,” he added, explaining that an algorithm was used to rank the reputation and credibility of sources.

Weblogs, or blogs, are increasingly common online postings in which people offer opinions or insights regarding whatever they choose.

Monitor110 will launch online at the beginning of 2007 and scan sources ranging from “alternative sites” to stock-exchange regulators for recurring information, said Ehrenberg, who once managed investment funds at Deutsche Bank.

Information gleaned by Monitor110 will help investment fund managers determine how to most profitably adjust portfolios, according to Ehrenberg.

He promised Monitor110 would be a precious resource and warned that subscriptions to the service would be priced to match, with the target audience expected to be sophisticated investors and fund managers.

Financial information has been among the hot battlegrounds for major Internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo, which operate “finance” sites.