September 25, 2021
1. Do you have one or more online trading or investment accounts?
Yes, I have one or more accounts that I access online, either using a computer or a mobile app but I also access the account(s) in other ways (e.g., by calling or visiting in person).
2. If your response to Question 1 is Yes, do you think you would trade or invest if you could not do so online using a computer or using a mobile app?
Yes
3. On average, how often do you access your online account?
Daily/more than once a day
4. On average, how often are trades made in your online account, whether by you or someone else?
Once to a few times per month.
5. If you access your account online, did you have the account first, and only began to access it electronically later? Or did you open the account with the idea that you would access it electronically immediately?
I downloaded an app or visited a website first, and then opened up an account with the company
6. My goals for trading or investing in my online account are (check all that apply):
Keep the amount of money I have, while keeping up with inflation
Save and grow my money for medium- to long-term goals
7. What would you like us to know about your experience with the features of your online trading or investment platform? (Examples of features are: social networking tools games, streaks, or contests with prizes points, badges, and leaderboards notifications celebrations for trading visual cues, like changing colors ideas presented at order placement or other curated lists or features subscription and membership tiers or chatbots.)
I only have or use the basic trading mechanisms at Fidelity and Schwab. I am wholly unfamiliar with the existence of many of the features you mention here.
8. If you were trading or investing prior to using an online account, how have your investing and trading behaviors changed since you started using your online account? (For example, the amount of money you have invested, your interest in learning about investing and saving for retirement, the amount of time you have spent trading, your knowledge of financial products, the number of trades you have made, the amount of money you have made in trading, your knowledge of the markets, the number of different types of financial products you have traded, or your use of margin.)
I am more attentive to my trades now, and I investigate more podcasts and trading strategies that my brokerages offer. Otherwise, my trading (and success rates) remain largely the same as they were in the mid-1980s, before the internet was around.
9. How much experience do you have trading or investing in the following products (None, 12 months, 1-2 years, 2-5 years, 5+ years):
Stocks : 5+ Years
Bonds : 5+ Years
Options : 5+ Years
Mutual Funds : 5+ Years
ETFs : 5+ Years
Futures : None
Cryptocurrencies : None
Commodities : None
ClosedEnd Funds : None
Money Market Funds : 5+ Years
Variable Insurance Products : None
Business Development Companies : None
Unit Investment Trusts : None
10. What is your understanding, if any, of the circumstances under which trading or investing in your account can be suspended or restricted?
I cannot speak knowledgeably of every criterion that might trip a lever that allows suspension or restriction of my trading. As an active participant in the market for a few decades now, I understand margin restrictions (though I never have traded on margin), but there are other criteria that clearly exist. Unless I am breaking a law, there should be no suspension or restriction in my trading. We have seen that some brokerages do not follow that pattern if they, their owners or associates and market makers, or other connected entities with a trading position of their own stand to lose on a trade. I understand that the SEC and other overseeing organizations evidently permit or at the least turn a blind eye to such manipulation of a free market, but they should not. It's picking sides, and apparently and more and more unsurprisingly always against the retail trader. Perverting the dependable flow of a market always happens from the top down, from those with the (monetary, administrative, and/or political) power to pervert the process, not from the unempowered retail investor who merely wants access to the market at all.
11. What else would you like us to know positive or negative - about your experience with online trading and investing?
Online trading is a facilitation of what trading has always been. Nothing more. People can commit frauds (pump-and-dump, etc) online just as they did before online platforms existed. People can see their investments shorted into oblivion (cellar-boxing, etc.) just as happened before. And people can take risks and lose (or win) as they did before. Any \"gamification\" that anyone wants to ascribe to online trading existed well before online platforms existed it's not the outcome of online trading but of the burgeoning array of derivatives that exist today that divorce value from the fundamental worth of the underlying businesses. Wall Street, not the internet, gamified investing, with penny stocks and derivatives. If anything, online trading (and, for that matter, the social media fora where trades are discussed, that many in the government equate now with online trading platforms as if they are the same thing) allows the investor to see and comprehend more information about an investment than they could before, so they can avoid some of these traps by the predators in the markets. I am a better, less naive, more knowledgeable investor because of online resources. The abuses we hear about today (and I will confess that I have been a victim more than once myself) are not the result of online trading but of malicious traders that the SEC, CFTC, etc. allow to operate with impunity or mere slaps on the wrist.