Google announced a revamp of its Finance product today, making it easier for casual investors to see, organize, and track their stock portfolios. The new interface has a nice new splash of color to better differentiate stocks, but there’s also some functional additions that will genuinely make a difference.
Read moreGoogle Finance gets a refresh to suit the needs of new retail investors
Public.com, if you haven’t heard of it, is a relatively new app that hopes to democratize investing for the next generation. It’s now raised a $15 million Series B round, but this time some cultural icons you’re likely familiar with are jumping on board.
Read moreCultural icons like Casey Neistat prop up investing app Public.com’s $15MM raise
Robinhood has done a great job at helping a younger generation become inspired to invest in the stock market, but let’s review how it holds up in the crypto space.
Read moreReview: Should you invest in cryptocurrency on Robinhood?
Today, the SEC released a proposal to loosen accredited investor requirements which will increase access to unregistered securites. Traditionally, for a person to become an accredited investor they either had receive annual income higher than $200k or have greater than a $1 million net worth. If the proposal succeeds, SEC requirements may change to allow people with certain certifications or education to become accredited investors.
Becoming an accredited investor allows individuals to invest in things like private equity, hedge funds, venture capital, and equity crowdfunding. Some feel like forbidding average citizens to have access to these types of investments is akin to discrimination while others believe opening the gates would help pump markets and foot the bill to newcomers.
SEC Chair Jay Clayton believes that modernization is long overdue.
“The proposal would add additional means for individuals to qualify to participate in our private capital markets based on established, clear measures of financial sophistication”
Potentially, all it would take is a bachelors degree to participate in an unregistered securities market.
Crypto Twitter has reacted quite positively to this announcement, as they tend to have a liberal outlook on open finance. Anthony Pompliano, who is essentially a spokesperson for Bitcoin in mainstream media, tweeted about the event.
“This is a step in the right direction. We must stop discriminating against 80%+ of Americans based on wealth.”
I believe that a reason crypto is such a popular investment within young demographics is because it allows them freedom that the government tries to take away from them. Not to say all of the freedom is safe, but young people with an internet connection don’t like to be censored. This is why you have tons of college aged students trading crypto with leverage, day trading it and investing in projects that don’t have great fundamentals.
This proposal offers nowhere near as much freedom as the crypto space does, but they are obviously trying to find a balance in this new world. We will update this article as the story progresses.
When learning about Bitcoin and the stock market, often times one will consider day trading before even knowing what dollar-cost averaging (DCA) is. This is because dollar-cost averaging is super boring. It requires patience and doesn’t trigger the euphoria of imagining a leveraged trade making you more in a day than your job pays per month.
Still, DCA is probably one of the smartest ways to manage an investment. Chances are, you don’t have time to learn the ins and outs of a market and even if you do, you’ll likely be losing money for a significant amount of your learning process. less than 10% of day traders make money, so before taking the risk, check out the returns you can get from dollar-cost averaging.
Dollar-cost averaging is pretty simple. It’s a technique where you deposit an equal amount at a consistent frequency over a certain amount of time.
One of the easiest ways to learn what you could have made by dollar-cost averaging for a certain amount of time is on dcabtc.com. Here, you can set up imaginary situations to see what you missed out on. First, set up the amount deposited, then choose the frequency, then how long you have(‘nt) been accumulating for.
So, let’s prove how effective DCA is by starting to accumulate during the beginning of the biggest crash Bitcoin has seen, in January 2018.
As you can see, if you had started investing equal payments every other week into Bitcoin since January 2018, you would have received a total of 26.66% return. I chose to deposit $100 bi-weekly, which landed with around $1,400 in profit, but if you had deposited $500 bi-weekly, total profit would be around $6000.
Now, let’s say you were a bit smarter and didn’t start averaging at the top of Bitcoin’s parabola. If you had invested $100 bi-weekly after Bitcoin’s final capitulation in December 2018, your returns would be increased to 50%. This would result in $1400 of profit within about 12 months.
If you think about it, it’s kind of difficult to keep putting money into an asset when its value is decreasing for months at a time. Markets tend to reward those who are psychologically strong. The easiest way to not falter and pull out is to set up recurring payments on an exchange like Coinbase and never look at the price.
The effectiveness of DCA also depends upon the asset you are investing in. You wouldn’t see the same results averaging into XRP, which is why it’s smart to pick an asset that has proven long term growth.
There is still risk to dollar-cost averaging, but it mitigates the risk of dumping tons of money into an investment at one price point, and it doesn’t rely on you keeping track of the market. These techniques can be used on any type of investment like gold, Apple or Tesla.