Patent ID: 8429051

Claim:
An investment guidance system for providing financial planning assistance, comprising: means for receiving a financial goal from a user; means for receiving one or more input decisions upon which the probability of achieving said financial goal is dependent, wherein one of the input decisions includes selecting an asset allocation based on investment risk; means for determining the probability of achieving said financial goal; means for receiving an indication that said user has selected a target asset allocation investment plan in order to achieve said financial goal; means for receiving a request to rate a plurality of assets within a selected asset class; means for providing two or more criteria associated with said assets for said user to evaluate; means for determining a normalized value for each of said two or more criteria; means for receiving a relative weight of importance for said two or more criteria based on the user's personal investment preferences; means for determining a rating for each asset based on the normalized values and the relative weights assigned to said two or more criteria; means for ranking plurality of said assets based on said rating; means for receiving a request to execute a trade for one or more of the ranked assets in order to fulfill said target asset allocation investment plan; and means for executing said trade for one or more of the selected ranked assets.