A few months ago, as the economy went into a tailspin and public sentiment turned against Wall Street, people angrily accused banks of taking advantage of Main Street.That is exactly when Peter Shepard, a former currency trader at Deutsche Bank, decided to launch a new social networking site aimed at helping retail investors -- or the little guy -- trade on a more even footing with the big guys on Wall Street.

For Shepard, this comes down to information sharing, and in particular strengthening retail traders' communications network, a factor which he says is essential to trading success.

"Wall Street's advantage over Main Street is a superior communications network and its speed of information," he says.

"I thought if you put together a resource of traders, they still will not have access to CEOs and brokers, but they will have a large network of information that they can share with the rest of the network," he adds.

MarketFriends (marketfriends.com) launched in mid-February, and offers a profile page for individual traders, an area where traders can post trade ideas and follow the ideas of others, a technical analysis forum where traders can post charts and get feedback from other members, as well as an area where traders can create a research team or join one and divide research tasks to get more specific information on certain stocks.

The website, which is free to join, also features a private chatroom, MarketFriend Chat, which enables traders to communicate in real-time with other traders around the world.

"Until now there haven't been any live chat rooms you don't have to pay for for retail traders," says Shepard, who left Deutsche Bank last December. He points out that real-time information sharing is even more valuable in today's economic environment.

Ultimately, while there are a lot of message board sites for traders, Shepard says MarketFriends is more likely to catch on, as it combines "a personalized social network with chat rooms and message boards, and helps create more trust [between traders]. With a typical message board, you don't know who you're sharing information with."

He adds: "I developed the idea for MarketFriends now as people more than ever hate Wall Street and see it as taking advantage of the little guy. This is now where the little guy can develop a stronger network of profitability and not rely on Wall Street who let him down."As public sentiment turned against Wall Street, Peter Shepard launched a new web site for retail traders not to have to rely on Wall Street who let them down.