[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.