A small team trying to change the world of personal investing. Their tagline is great too; "We believe that exceptionally engineered systems — not marble office buildings on Wall St — are the cornerstones of establishing trust."
I've been following Robinhood closely, so it's great to see it here.
However, my thesis in this space is that *fewer* people should control their stock portfolios, and that the best way to "change the world of personal investing" is to get more people on services like Wealthfront.
@howardlindzon (and others): Convince me that more people should control their own portfolios.
@NeilThanedar@howardlindzon Robo-advisors aren't designed to beat the market. It's risk-adjusted market matching returns. I personally feel like an astute investor would do just fine stacked up against these companies and have a much better chance of outperforming them with a small basket of stocks. I also think this is true if you compare individual investors with professional money managers. Most of them don't beat the market either.
@brandwagon@howardlindzon But that's exactly my point. I don't believe that I can consistently beat the market, and so I instead want to "lock in" market matching returns on Wealthfront and spend the time saved on building my own company, where I expect to beat the market by orders of magnitude.
Wealthfront solves this problem for me, but they also solve a more important problem. That is making investing so simple that it pulls "small-time" investors off the sidelines.*
Robinhood seems to make it easier/cheaper to make trades, but doesn't seem designed to help anyone beat the market. Thus, I would rather have small-time investors join Wealthfront and learn to keep their money invested in risk-adjusted portfolios in all market conditions instead of convincing them to try and "time the market" or "beat the market". The rational choice for most amateur investors should be to lock in market matching returns.
*I have no financial interest in any of the companies mentioned (other than my own). I'm just an happy 18-month customer of Wealthfront.
@NeilThanedar@howardlindzon then I would say its a perfect service for you. For the people using Robinhood, this is something they enjoy as well. For me, I'd like a little of both. Over several years, I did pretty well though with the buy and hold strategy on a handful of stocks. You could of course just buy $SPY and avoid those bigger management fees.
Is curation the reason @adamnash's Wealthfront isn't on this list @howardlindzon? Or is it because it has already been hunted by @hunterwalk? Either way, I like the overall list. Would be interesting to read a post or commentary on why these were the overall pics @rrhoover (same goes for all collections).
Replies
VentureForth with Howard Lindzon, co-founder & general partner @ Social Leverage
VentureForth with Howard Lindzon, co-founder & general partner @ Social Leverage
VentureForth with Howard Lindzon, co-founder & general partner @ Social Leverage
Curiosity