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 both online using a computer and using a mobile app.
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?
Once to a few times per month
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 had a pre-existing account and downloaded an app or visited a website to access my account
6. My goals for trading or investing in my online account are (check all that apply):
Save and grow my money for short-term goals (in the next year or two)
Save and grow my money for medium- to long-term goals
Have fun
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 use the fidelity mobile beta, which is nowhere near as gamified as some other platforms, so I cant speak to the prizes, fireworks, and happy sounds on those platforms. However I would like a way I could completely toggle everything off besides plain text showing only pertinent information, even including the green and red colors, if I could. Maybe things could be toggled off by default when the app downloads, and then a pop up could appear that says which ones you want to toggle on with a consent. Kind of like the warnings on the back of a cigarette box. Thing is you guys probably dont have data showing direct effects of using gamified platforms and non-gamified platforms across different time horizons, but if you guys did, you could put that there. Its too early at this point to regulate imo without the data. In fact I think the games and all that are getting more younger people interested in investing rather than spending on useless crap like smoking, alcohol, etc. Id rather have gamblers investing in companies than on roulette spins, and Id wager more than a dime myself that a lot of gamblers have already switched to these platforms. The issue isnt buying and selling stonks- its more options trading with leverage. The bulk of any regs should be directed to the latter imo, and should go as far as a default toggle off, with an option to consent, and maybe an age limit similar to gambling if the brokerages arent already requiring that. Still Id rather the gamblers move under the ambit of the sec and exchange regs than remain at more unregulated casinos where theres money laundering galore. Id also wager the casino lobby is upset these online platforms are taking their business.
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.)
It used to be I used a desktop account but now I use mobile. My knowledge of the markets has gone up substantially. I started looking into proxy voting and seeing what directors did and was looking into forecasts and learned more about macro economics. Since the crash in March 2020, I became used to using my phone to look at my stocks (and later cryptos) whenever I was at the restroom, which I cant do with a desktop and I dont like doing with a laptop. Ive invested more, but only because Ive earned a bit more from previous investments. It used to be I was embarrassed to look at my brokerage account because of how much I lost over several years holding onto leveraged inverse positions (was severely uneducated about the longterm ramifications of holding such positions).. then I got desensitized in a positive way to accepting prior loss and reinvested that capital into better things. Havent used margin, but I have reduced diversification substantially for my stocks to about 5 or 6. Im only in my twenties.
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 : None
Options : None
Mutual Funds : 5+ Years
ETFs : 5+ Years
Futures : None
Cryptocurrencies : 1-2 Years
Commodities : 5+ Years
ClosedEnd Funds : None
Money Market Funds : None
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?
Outside of breaking the law in some way or getting margin called if you trade on margin, not sure.
11. What else would you like us to know positive or negative - about your experience with online trading and investing?
I learned a lot more about how the markets work since last March, 2020. Thats when I first joined a subreddit called r/wallstreetbets. Many of them (the Gay Bears) lost a bunch of money expecting the market to keep tanking, when Jerome Powell (Jpow) turned on the money printer (brrrr), and that made me more interested in how macro econ worked in terms of Fed policy. I watched as other members of r/wallsteetbets invested in tanker stocks during the great oil surplus and negative oil prices, in Hertz as the company went bankrupt (silly hertz actually paid out lol), and eventually in gamestop. I enjoy the unpretentious and humble nature of the people who interact on some of these subreddits. Theres a lot of learning going on, and good answers and content tend to float to the top. I took some graduate classes related to securities regulation and while we discussed the basics of dark pools and swaps, we didnt mention a fraction of the different things Ive seen recently on Reddit, including failures to deliver (or that there could ever be trouble for a seller to locate shares and delivering), or that even 5% of the violations reported in FINRA reports were even possible or could be a problem to begin with, and also total return swaps, divorced swaps, and other derivatives and financial issues. I did not know it was possible for there to be multiple beneficial owners of the same stock held at the DTCC, which Im still unclear about so maybe you guys can publish a report about that and about the pros and cons of direct registration. I did buy some GameStop in January, but since Robinhood and others turned off the buy buttons, Ive been following the story to find out the full chain of effects as to why they did that. I know the stock market is supposed to efficiently allocate capital among other things, but I dont understand how it can do that when share price at least for some companies cannot reflect the intrinsic value of the company in the presence of counterfeit shares floating around retails brokerage accounts, which leads to suppression of true value of those shares. Maybe you guys should look at counterfeit shares the same way that feds look at counterfeit money, which also suppress the true value of money, not to mention counterfeiting is a form of cheating. This has put a bad taste in my mouth, but I do think online trading reduces the barriers to the markets and to information, so Im in favor of it. I think we need more time to evaluate its pros and cons.
Still a place it might be more acceptable for you guys to look at would be the integration of social media with online investing. Maybe help Reddit create a limited privacy verification regime where certain aspects of a users persona can be verified publicly, such as whether a user owns between 10-20 Tesla shares, has x amount of a crypto, or their country of origin, in order to interact on certain subreddits and to mitigate the manipulation of behavior using bots. The only way there would be public buy-in is if this was accomplished on a redundant system of decentralized programmable blockchains. Or else it may only get harder to regulate if people make a decentralized version of Reddit. Same goes for Twitter.
I have seen too many crypto scams perpetuated on Reddit, Twitter, Youtube, and telegram. You guys need to convince Congress to pay you more money, and any retail reading this should know its in your best interest the SEC has enough money to do its job.
Thanks for reading.