The YOLO generation
Worldwide traditional wealth building methods like real estate have become largely unaffordable. This trend was driven by expansive monetary policy over the last decade and economic growth especially in China. This has left many, especially younger, market participants facing an uphill battle to financial progress, being left without means to build up additional revenue streams which are cornerstones to building up wealth.
Zero-commission trading has provided especially new retail investors with unprecedented capabilities to analyze, invest, and discuss investment together.
Yet, the existing stock and also crypto markets are heavily leveraged against these retail investor and the average performance over the last two decades have been abysmal.
As a result, this new generation of retail investors’ trading is more akin to a natural extension of hustle culture and is expressed through an active trading philosophy. Why ? Because investors are pushed towards taking high-risk investments with the opportunity for high payouts. But also retail investors enjoy investing their money where their passion and expertise is based. And since these traders are usually younger and might not have seen a recession during their lifetime, they are overly optimistic about the trades they enter.
Unfortunately, new investors are easily swayed by FOMO, hype and disinformation and fall victim to scams, pump-and-dump schemes. This holds true across equity, derivatives, and crypto markets. In addition the retail investors are frequenting messaging platforms like Telegram / Stocktwits / Discord that are noisy and confusing. So extracting the right information at the right time is costly in terms of time and money.
But there is a distinct change in how, especially younger people invest. We talk online about our gains, losses, discuss ideas and concerns. And a platform is needed that provides the context and transparency to the benefit of the whole community.
Websites like Wallstreetbets with more than 10 million users are evidently popular, but provide no specialized functionality for investing. Robinhood and other trading apps do have a community section, but they are not focused on the demands of the community but its target on tweet-like interactions. Further they are encouraging rash, quick, witty replies which, while clearly being fun and engaging in the short-term, mostly do not provide useful information and only increase noise.
The solution to this problem is a site where knowledgeable financial services creators can earn extra income by providing feedback and opinions -- not financial advisory -- to retail investors in support of their investment journey.
In addition, most professional advisors, including robo-advisors, are risk-adverse and boring. The excitement in trading is coming from taking measured investments into risky and volatile investments. Modern investors prefer this because they have the transparency to understand the risk, believe in the story, and want to enjoy the fun and community that comes with it.
Traditional online communities are full of noise and misdirection. The reality is that no one knows everything.
Last modified 1yr ago