Robinhood and his Merry Men

By Angus Woods |

News

Superannuation

Budgeting

Getting Advice

In the last couple of weeks, the internet army with a free trading app in hand, were looking to rip the heart out of Wall Street and the ever-expanding wealth of the short-derivative obsessed rich vultures, as they were termed. Appropriately named and armed with Robinhood in their back-pockets, the Reddit crew were determined to drive an able, but profit constrained gaming company, GameStop, to dizzying valuation heights, providing a ponzi-like distribution of wealth. Or, supposedly, that was the plan. Depending on what depiction of the real Robin Hood folklore you believe, the new trading app left a lot of the “poor” holding massive losses when his Merry Men ran out of liquor as both rich and poor had nothing left to steal.

What the GameStop story is telling us, is we live in a world where technology is now flowing into the world of “investing” and finance. Ahead of us, we have a new generation of young, tech-savvy risk-takers, burdened by an unaffordable housing market and flush with government stimulus. The pandemic and subsequent lockdown saw a willingness to research terms like money, budgeting, risk-taking, spending, investing…..accordingly whether the fundamentals are there, Tesla gained 800% last year, Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies are 400% higher and AfterPay, the darling of millennials, is now the 12th most valuable company in Australia at $43 Billion (six years after it was founded).

Many of these companies are driven by something more – the power of the crowd! Crowds like Together Australia. It becomes somewhat self-fulfilling. The more viral something is, the greater the adoption, the more money can be raised, revenue earned and hopefully spawn a better solution or product or network (or in some instances, validation of a decentralised currency over FIAT currency)

Tesla has helped legitimise crypto-currency (Source: Igor Beuker for ViralBlog.com)

At the moment from our current survey to Together Australia subscribers, awareness of existing finance based apps / advice is small across all age groups for finance based apps / advice is small. The question we have been asking is about awareness of technology in Auto Investing (like Stockspot), Simple Budgeting Tools (like ASIC’s MoneySmart), Detailed Budgeting (like PocketBook, Finder App), Cheap Share Trading apps (like SuperHero), Credit Scoring (like GetCreditScore) and Neobanks (like ‘Up’). Below are the aggregate totals, but awareness is low across all age groups and categories or at the very least, if awareness exists, nothing out there is creating an AfterPay effect on the market.

Source: Consumer Advice Survey, Advice Landscape, Feb 2021

 

 

Still yet to take the survey – complete here

However, as the stats below show, close to 70-80% of Australians under the age of 45 are ready for it.

Source: Consumer Advice Survey, Advice Landscape, Feb 2021

Where do you fit in this new world of money management? Complete survey HERE

0 Join the Discussion
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x