[TaupeRanger]

Being "confident" and "informed" are not virtues when investing for middle/upper-middle class people. They simply need to put money in a good ETF or managed money-market fund with low fees, and contribute regularly. No "research" should be involved.

[jplr8922]

Hi! I have a Msc in finance and a CFA. I've worked as a professional quantitative investor, and I've never purchased a single stock for myself!

I had a view similar to yours regarding ETF and average investors until 3 months ago. For many reasons, I decided to become more active on social media in order to increase financial literacy. I was shocked by the amount of marketing the 'middle class' are exposed to. Competition is intense, and giving good financial advice is actually an uphill battle. I consider this environment to be toxic for the average individual.

Is this app perfect? probably not. However, I view this type of initiative as an improvment!

[smt88]

> I consider this environment to be toxic for the average individual.

So to repeat what another person said: wouldn't the most accurate advice be to ignore all the marketing and use ETFs?

If people are inundated with marketing telling them to be active investors, telling them to be a more informed active investor is not the solution.

[jplr8922]

*wouldn't the most accurate advice be to ignore all the marketing*

Your point is right, but I'm afraid that the underlying advice is not applicable. First of all few people are truly in control of their attention span, and we are all exposed to marketing wether we like it or not. You might as well ask a dog to ignore the smell of food.

*If people are inundated with marketing telling them to be active investors, telling them to be a more informed active investor is not the solution*

The problem with some popular financial apps is that the marketing is 'built in as a feature'. My banking app allows me to create a 'saving account', which sounds like a good think to do right? However if I click, I will have ''investing options'' to choose, which are all financial product sold by the institution. These types of 'financial dark patterns' are all over the industry. In Canada, I consider those to be built in by law, and are not likely to change any time soon.

Managing investor bias is not something you can achieve with a mathematical argument; it requires patience, trial and error. People who are bombarded with marketing about stock trading will avoid ETF and trade stocks. I think that a lot of them would benefit a learning environment which was not created by financial institution to sell them products in the first place. You could then introduce a feature, where the apps suggest some ETF information if the portfolio is hyper concentrated in a few stock, etc.

[hippofluff]

Hi! I really appreciate this perspective, you're not wrong, but I do think there's room for a lot of investment styles. I know a lot of middle/upper class people that enjoy analyzing stocks for long term holds in companies they believe in.

I respect we won't cater to everyone, but the numbers/data we are seeing is showing a lot of our subs are middle aged/middle class people that are loving our tool. So some people will want it, some won't, that's my take.

If you ever get curious, please think of us! Again, thanks for the insight :)

[smt88]

> I do think there's room for a lot of investment styles. I know a lot of middle/upper class people that enjoy analyzing stocks for long term holds in companies they believe in.

So are you investment education or are you investment data?

The former pushes people toward a certain investment style, and currently that investment style is one that loses them money (as you seem to know).

It seems that you're trying to democratize something like Bloomberg. In the hands of an individual retail investor, it's essentially a tool for gambling. I don't think there's anything immoral about that, but the veneer of "making the world better" in your posts really rubs me the wrong way.

If your goal is to educate people for the betterment of society, tell them not to look at stock market data, not to pay attention to people like Kramer, and to put their money into ETFs.

[hippofluff]

> So are you investment education or are you investment data?

Both! For example, think investopedia is great but it's not contextual education, aka it's not given to you at the right time. I was able to learn best by applying the numbers with education and actually exercising/using it. This is also why I believe that the static white text/endless pages of definitions isn't the type of education that ends up working in this case (people have short attention spans/it's boring/dry).

Responding to your other messages, I appreciate your honest concern around the gambling. I agree that when people trade/try to see patterns in charts, buy/sell within a year or two, that is gambling.

We may agree to disagree on this one, but long term stock investing, when you buy and hold great companies for 5, 10, 20 years, is what we are going for here. We believe that when you can identify a great company, and have patience/the right long term mindset to DCA into it over time, you can do well. You can do that with a small % of your capital, we are also adding suport for ETFs and I agree those are also great investment vehicles for people that don't have the time/care to truly analyze individual stocks/businesses.