Are there any risks from using mint.com?
"Mint.com uses something called OFX (Open Financial Exchange) to get the information in your bank account. If someone accessed your mint account they would not be able to perform any transactions with your bank. All they would be able to do is view the same information you do, which some of it could be personal <- that's up to you. Generally the weakest point in security is with the user. An ""attacker"" is far more likely to get your account information from you then he is from the site your registered with.  Why you're the weakest point: When you enter your account information, your password is never saved exactly how you enter it. It's passed through what is called a ""one way function"", these functions are easy to compute one way but given the end-result is EXTREMELY difficult to compute in reverse. So in a database if someone looked up your password they would see it something like this ""31435008693ce6976f45dedc5532e2c1"". When you log in to an account your password is sent through this function and then the result is checked against what is saved in the database, if they match you are granted access. The way an attacker would go about getting your password is by entering values into the function and checking the values against yours, this is known as a brute force attack. For our example (31435008693ce6976f45dedc5532e2c1) it would take someone 5 million years to decry-pt using a basic brute force attack. I used ""thisismypassword"" as my example password, it's 12 characters long. This is why most sites urge you to create long passwords with a mix of numbers, uppercase, lowercase and symbols. This is a very basic explanation of security and both sides have better tools then the one explained but this gives you an idea of how security works for sites like these. You're far more likely to get a virus or a key logger steal your information. I do use Mint. Edit: From the Mint FAQ: Do you store my bank login information on your servers?   Your bank login credentials are stored securely in a separate database   using multi-layered hardware and software encryption. We only store the   information needed to save you the trouble of updating, syncing or   uploading financial information manually. Edit 2:  From OFX About Security Open Financial Exchange (OFX) is a unified specification for the   electronic exchange of financial data between financial institutions,   businesses and consumers via the Internet. This is how mint is able to communicate with even your small local bank. FINAL EDIT: ( This answers everything )  For passwords to Mint itself, we compute a secure hash of the user's   chosen password and store only the hash (the hash is also salted - see   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sal... ).  Hashing is a one-way function   and cannot be reversed.   It is not possible to ever see or recover   the password itself.  When the user tries to login, we compute the   hash of the password they are attempting to use and compare it to the   hashed value on record. (This is a standard technique which every site   should use). For banking credentials, we generally must use reversible encryption   for which we have special procedures and secure hardware kept in our   secure and guarded datacenter.  The decryption keys never leave the   hardware device (which is built to destroy the key material if the   tamper protection is attacked).  This device will only decrypt after   it is activated by a quorum of other keys, each of which is stored on   a smartcard and also encrypted by a password known to only one person.   Furthermore the device requires a time-limited   cryptographically-signed permission token for each decryption. The   system (which I designed and patented) also has facilities for secure   remote auditing of each decryption. Source: David K Michaels, VP Engineering, Mint.com - http://www.quora.com/How-do-mint-com-and-similar-websites-avoid-storing-passwords-in-plain-text" "Some banks allow mint.com read-only access via a separate ""access code"" that a customer can create.  This would still allow an attacker to find out how much money you have and transaction details, and may have knowledge of some other information (your account number perhaps, your address, etc). The problem with even this read-only access is that many banks also allow users at other banks to set up a direct debit authorization which allows withdrawals.  And to set the direct debit link up, the main hurdle is to be able to correctly identify the dates and amounts of two small test deposit transactions, which could be done with just read-only access. Most banks only support a single full access password per account, and there you have a bigger potential risk of actual fraudulent activity. But if you discover such activity and report it in a timely manner, you should be refunded. Make sure to check your account frequently. Also make sure to change your passwords once in a while." With Mint you are without a doubt telling a third party your username and password.  If mint gets compromised, or hires a bad actor, technically there isn't anything to stop shenanigans.  You simply must be vigilant and be aware of your rights and the legal protections you have against fraud. For all the technical expertise and careful security they put in place, we the customers have to know that there is not, nor will there ever be, a perfectly secure system. The trade off is what you can do for the increased risk.  And when taken into the picture of all the Other* ways you banking information is exposed, and how little you can do about it, mint.com is only a minor increase in risk in my opinion. *See paypal, a check's routing numbers, any e-commerce site you shop at, every bank that has an online facing system, your HR dept's direct deposit and every time you swipe your debit / credit card somewhere. These are all technically risks, some of which are beyond your control to change.  Short of keeping your money in your mattress you can't avoid risk.  (And then your mattress catches fire.) Here's a very simple answer, ask your broker/bank.  Mine uses ofx.  When asked if they would reimburse me for any unauthorized activity, the answer was no.  Simple enough, the banks that use it don't feel its secure enough.
I think you need to be very careful here. Covered calls don't reduce risk or increase performance overall. If they did, every investment manager would be using them. In a typical portfolio, over the long term, the gains you give up when your stock goes beyond the strike of your calls will negate the premiums you receive over time. Psychologically, covered calls are appealing because your gains happen over a long period and this is why many people suggest it. But if you believe the Black-Scholes model (used for pricing options) this is what the model predicts over the long term - that you won't do any better than just holding stock (unless you have some edge other traders don't). Now you say you want to reduce diversification and raise your risk. Keeping in mind that there is no free lunch, there are several ways to reduce your risk but they all come at a price. For simplicity, there are three elements to consider - risk, potential gain and cash. These are tradeoffs and you can't simultaneously make them all favorable. You must trade one or more of them to gain in the others. Let's say you wanted to concentrate into a few stocks... how could you counteract the additional risk? 1) Covered calls: very popular strategy usually intended (erroneously) for increasing returns. You get the bonus of cash along with marginally less risk. But you give up a substantial amount of potential return. You won't have blowout returns if you do this. You still face substantial risk. 2) Collar your stock: You sell a covered call while using the cash from the sale to buy puts for protection. You give up potential gains, you're neutral on cash but gain significantly on reducing risk.  3) Use calls as proxy for stock: You don't hold stock but only calls in equivalent delta to the stock you would have held. Substantially lower risk while still having potential gain. Your tradeoff is the cash you have to pay for the calls. When using this, one must be very, very careful not to overleverage.  4) Puts as protection for stocks: This is basically the same as #3 in tradeoffs. You won't overleverage and you also get dividends. But for the most part it's the same. These are the main ways to reduce the risk you gain by concentrating. Options themselves are far broader. But keep in mind that there is no free money. All these techniques involve tradeoffs that you have to be aware of. If you have 100% of your money in one security that is inherently more risky than splitting your money 50/50 between two securities, regardless of the purported riskiness of the two securities. The calculations people use to justify their particular breed of diversification may carry some assumptions related risk/reward calculations.  But these particular justifications don't change the fact that spreading your money across different assets protects your money from value variances of the individual assets.  Splitting your $100 between Apple and Microsoft stock is probably less valuable (less well diversified) than splitting your money between Apple and Whole Foods stock but either way you're carrying less risk than putting all $100 in to Apple stock regardless of the assumed rates of return for any of these companies stock specifically. Edit: I'm sure the downvotes are because I didn't make a big deal about correlation and measuring correlation and standard deviations of returns and detailed portfolio theory.  Measuring efficacy and justifying your particular allocations (that generally uses data from the past to project the future) is all well and good.  Fact of the matter is, if you have 100% of your money in stock that's more stock risk than 25% in cash, 25% in bonds and 50% in stock would be because now you're in different asset classes.  You can measure to your hearts delight the effects of splitting your money between different specific companies, or different industries, or different market capitalizations, or different countries or different fund managers or different whatever-metrics and doing any of those things will reduce your exposure to those specific allocations.   It may be worth pointing out that currently the hot recommendation is a plain vanilla market tracking S&P 500 index fund (that just buys some of each of the 500 largest US companies without any consideration given to risk correlation) over standard deviation calculating actively managed funds.  If you ask me that speaks volumes of the true efficacy of hyper analyzing the purported correlations of various securities. In your comment in response to this answer, you said that your biggest issue is oversight, which you can do by checking your online bank account regularly. Mint.com looks good but you're in Australia? Easy, check out getpocketbook.com. Using it and love it, helps a lot to track your tracking, and it's a god-send during tax time. If I buy VUSA from one exchange, can I sell it in a different exchange, assuming my brokerage account lets me trade in both exchanges? Or is it somehow tied to the exchange I bought it from? This doesn't happen for all securities and between all stock exchanges. So that is dependent on broker and country. I checked for VUSA with Selftrade. They categorically refused allowing me to trade in VUSA in different exchanges. I can only buy and sell in same currency only, albeit sell(buy) in the same exchange where I buy(sell) from. Should be the same behaviour for all brokers for us mere mortals, if you are a bank or a millionaire than that might be a different question.  The VUSA you quote is quoted in GBP in LSE and in EUR in AEX, and the ETF has been created by an Irish entity and has an Irish ISIN.  As Chris mentioned below, happens between US and Canadian exchanges, but not sure it happens across all exchanges. You cannot deal in inter-listed stocks in LSE and NYSE. Since it's the same asset, its value should not vary across exchanges once you compensate for exchange rates, right? Yes, else it opens up itself for arbitrage (profit without any risk) which everybody wants. So even if any such instance occurs, either people will exploit it to make the arbitrage profit zero (security reflects the equilibrium price) or the profit from such transaction is so less, compared with the effort involved, that people will tend to ignore it. Anyways arbitrage profit is very difficult to garner nowadays, considering the super computers at work in the market who exploit these discrepancies, the moment they see them and bring the security right to the zero arbitrage profit point. If there's no currency risk because of #2, what other factors should I consider when choosing an exchange to trade in? Liquidity? Something else? Time difference, by the time you wake up to trade in Japan, the Japanese markets would have closed. Tax implications across multiple continents. Law of the land, providing protection to investors. Finding a broker dealing in markets you want to explore or dealing with multiple brokers. Regulatory headaches. I'm always hesitant to use local credit unions because I love accessing all atms fee free, having services available 24/7, having robust, safe and audited online services, and having a big enough bank that all major third party tools interface with it.   Joe Schmo Local Credit Union has a lot of good services, but audited and secure online banking? No fee nationwide ATMs? Native interfacing to major tools? I just don't see it often.   I shudder to think of the security at small bank websites, frankly. "Any time someone starts asking you to provide personal information, such as a birth date, it could very well be a scam.  This is especially true if it's someone you don't even know.  Be very careful about getting involved in such situations. There is always some kind of almost believable story to what the scammers tell you, and unless you're willing to look deeper into it then it's easy to get pulled in.  On top of that, you have to ask yourself, ""why did they pick me for this?"", because that's the real question.   You have no idea what else the software they're asking you to download might do that you wouldn't know about, but offering to pay you something is a good way for them to get you to bypass your own security by installing it yourself.  If the offer sounds too good to be true or too easy, you have to question it, and in such cases, your best bet is to stay away from it altogether." I don't see a way that this would make matters worse than just giving them the credit card info... Except that it would make abusing the card easier at some other site (or the bank) if they have a similar (unreasonably weak) security-by-photo test. Still, I'd strongly recommend you use a separate card for this so you can cancel it without disrupting your other credit card uses.  (Actually I'd strongly recommend not doing business with folks who have already demonstrated questionable ethics, but you seem to have made that decision.) "That right there is one of the most dangerous things that I think I have ever read. Google, has turned evidence over to the NSA and FBI numerous times even without warrants. Look at their TOS; you will see that you are allowing them to do that. Google is one of the most horrendous companies when it comes to ""your"" privacy. Microsoft has taken the US government to court more times involving their user's privacy and protection. Granted they are all about the monopoly, so there's that. Apple has an impressive history of telling the FBI to suck it.  When it comes to cloud-based security, one of the best roads to go down would be creating your own, if you can."