The cynic in me really wants to suggest that the price retail investors will pay is that they may run into a broker who is able to pass an ethics test. Accreditation is a function of every industry but the financial sector has fought it at every step. In part, I think that this resistance is the realization that they are largely obsolete. In the last ASX Australian Investor Survey, only 27% of people stated that they use a broker or financial advisor to make to make a financial decision in the past 12 months and this percentage will only decrease as a new generation of investors/traders make use of the available technology and more passive forms of investment such as ETFs. The threat of increasing costs is an empty one since the quoted 100% failure of Bell Potter advisors will in no way impact upon online brokers who transact without giving advice.
This change in investor demographic and decision making is being driven by a wave of new first-time investors – in the last year some 265,00 new investors hit the market. The vast majority of these are under 40 – so the od days of dealing with someone you went to Scotch College with and talking about buying BHP whilst having lunch at the SavagClub are long gone. The piy is that the broking community and in particular older firms such as Bell Potter don’t realize their increasing irrelevance and the increasing irrelevance of their way of giving advice.
Are your past opinions on BTC also irrelevant ? Asking for a friend 😛
Which comments?
Haven’t you several times suggested BTC was more or less a steaming turd/scam ? 😛
That view hasn’t changed – my view is that it is this century’s Tulip Boom or South Seas Boom. Bitcoin cant do anything of things its promotors say it can do and it certainly won’t be replacing real money anytime soon.
However, that doesn’t mean that it does not have utility as a trading vehicle – it is necessary to separate the usefulness of an instrument from its capacity to generate returns for a trader. The same thing occurred during the DotCom boom – most listed tech stocks at the time were rubbish and never going to amount to anything but that didn’t stop people from making (and losing) money in them.
Agreed.
I reckon this bloke puts it best : Market commentator Josh Brown (The Reformed Broker) . Talking about cryptocurrencies and crazy investing ideas, he said, “That sounds stupid… I’m buying some just in case.”
With 6% economic growth, plus zero percent interest rates, plus millions of people sitting around on their phones all day speculating in stupid sh*t on the internet, your regrets will multiply daily as said stupid sh*t continues to grow…
As for what is real money. I think we’re all going to find out in the next few years