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I guess I would want to see the outcomes of the average user. If the median user underperforms the S&P 500, which they likely will, I feel it's misleading to sa

I guess I would want to see the outcomes of the average user. If the median user underperforms the S&P 500, which they likely will, I feel it's misleading to say you're empowering people. The alternative, meme-y yolo stocks, are worse, but is this really better if the informed choice is highly likely to be sitting in an ETF? > We also wanted to move away from a gamified experience which tends to cause stress and anxiety around investing - so we’ve gone as far as removing red and green from the app entirely If you're taking material personal financial losses and you're not feeling stressed, I'd say there's a problem

joelbluminator 6y ago
Doesnt the median user earn the market return which we could say is S&P 500?
- smabie 6y ago
  Not necessarily, the distribution of people's returns have a lot of skew or fat tails.
- hong_kong 6y ago
  The average professional fund manager actually underperforms the S&P. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the average retail investor does even worse. However, there's an easy way for people to overcome this - buying an index fund (Vanguard is very cheap), which lets you capture (almost) the S&P's performance.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  If everyone's strategy were to buy some collection of assets and sit on them, you would expect some definition of the average individual to earn the average market return. But users of trading platforms are probably trading actively, and making mistakes. It's also likely that the average user would benefit from a diversified portfolio to reduce the risk of losing big all at once. They're less likely to get that picking stocks themselves.
paulgb 6y ago
> If you're taking material personal financial losses and you're not feeling stressed, I'd say there's a problem I disagree. Markets tend to swing around but trend upwards on average. If you are emotionally tied to the big red or green number when you see when you open up your brokerage app, you're bound to make bad, emotionally-based decisions. (Edit: I guess our disagreement might come down to the definition of "material". In the past few days of market turbulence I've had days where I was up or down by amounts that I would be devastated to have “fall out of my pocket”, but that I can shrug off because I know I can't time the market and I'm better off not trying.)
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  I guess you're right. But conversely if something you're invested in "for the long haul" has a demonstrated long term negative trend, I'd probably want that to be on my radar. On some level my concern is that this platform will get people interested in making highly undiversified portfolios, allow them to lose their shirt, and not give an indication that their current strategy is failing and that they should STOP putting more money in.
  - paulgb 6y ago
    Makes sense, that is a valid concern. I think the right balance is somewhere less emotion-driven than Robinhood’s dopamine cycle, is all.

joelbluminator 6y ago

Doesnt the median user earn the market return which we could say is S&P 500?

smabie 6y ago
Not necessarily, the distribution of people's returns have a lot of skew or fat tails.
hong_kong 6y ago
The average professional fund manager actually underperforms the S&P. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the average retail investor does even worse. However, there's an easy way for people to overcome this - buying an index fund (Vanguard is very cheap), which lets you capture (almost) the S&P's performance.
klmadfejno 6y ago
If everyone's strategy were to buy some collection of assets and sit on them, you would expect some definition of the average individual to earn the average market return. But users of trading platforms are probably trading actively, and making mistakes. It's also likely that the average user would benefit from a diversified portfolio to reduce the risk of losing big all at once. They're less likely to get that picking stocks themselves.

paulgb 6y ago

> If you're taking material personal financial losses and you're not feeling stressed, I'd say there's a problem I disagree. Markets tend to swing around but trend upwards on average. If you are emotionally tied to the big red or green number when you see when you open up your brokerage app, you're bound to make bad, emotionally-based decisions. (Edit: I guess our disagreement might come down to the definition of "material". In the past few days of market turbulence I've had days where I was up or down by amounts that I would be devastated to have “fall out of my pocket”, but that I can shrug off because I know I can't time the market and I'm better off not trying.)

klmadfejno 6y ago
I guess you're right. But conversely if something you're invested in "for the long haul" has a demonstrated long term negative trend, I'd probably want that to be on my radar. On some level my concern is that this platform will get people interested in making highly undiversified portfolios, allow them to lose their shirt, and not give an indication that their current strategy is failing and that they should STOP putting more money in.
- paulgb 6y ago
  Makes sense, that is a valid concern. I think the right balance is somewhere less emotion-driven than Robinhood’s dopamine cycle, is all.