Making a profit in the stock market is a tough test at the best of times- especially in the past two years, during a period of global recession. There is rarely a safe way to make a quick buck in the temperamental crowded world of share trading.

However, one method often adopted by trading novices is to mimic the trading activities of proven investors with an established reputation and nous for making money.

The theory isn’t fool proof, as any successful entrepreneur will acknowledge.  And the tips aren’t necessarily easy to get hold of either, otherwise any man and his monkey would be stalking the likes of Richard Branson and Donald Trump, and making vast amounts of money in the process.

So how do you get access to such information?

Word of mouth is the short answer- but with social media such a prominent and viral tool for so many different people, a quick tweet, Facebook message or blog post can find the wisdom of one man or woman suddenly propelled and spread to a global audience of thousands in seconds.

The speed and scale of the ‘word of mouth’ has radically changed. Expertise is now available everywhere, which Zack Miller terms as ‘tradestreaming.’ But can you trust the consensus and wisdom of ‘the Crowd?’

There is no quick answer to this question, but companies like Piqqem aim to find out. Piqqem offers access to graphical interfaces to make stock predictions about public equities, including companies that the public have very little knowledge about. They are so sure of the value of the wisdom of the crowd, that they believe that all views are equally important- ignorant or otherwise.

The company aggregates the Crowd’s ratings and presents a visual representation of what this actually means. For registered users (and sceptics), the Crowdsourced stock market expertise is divided into demographics (e.g. profession, age, location).

CNN Money point to Intel as an example of the Crowd getting it right. In mid July, Intel outperformed the predictions forecast by industry analysts for their second-quarter results. Zack Miller said: “(Intel’s) stock rose nearly 2% and the Crowd was there for the ride. According to Piqqem, the user sentiment rating on Intel was extremely positive heading into July.”

So should we consider this a fluke or a new method for getting ahead in the stock market game? Let us know your views in the comments section below!