Hi all, it's Eric. The technology industry likes to make things easier and cheaper. But sometimes friction isn’t so bad. Take recreational financial speculation, for example. There was a time when people who wanted to take on credit card debt to trade complex financial products had to demonstrate a certain level of sophistication. Making reckless trades often meant calling up a human broker and instructing them to carry them out on your behalf, which could be embarrassing and time-consuming. That was good!
Inevitably the internet changed things, and there have been recent reminders of the consequences. Last month, a man committed suicide after his account on Robinhood Markets Inc., the company at the vanguard of low-friction stock trading, appeared to be $730,000 in the red. He’d been making complex trades that showed a negative balance that far exceeded his actual financial situation. This week, the New York Times spoke to another user who funded his Robinhood trading account with $15,000 in credit card debt and multiple home equity loans. “When he is doing his trading, he won’t want to eat,” his wife told the paper.
The internet hasn't just made it easier to lose money on traditional financial instruments; it has led to the creation of some digitally-native forms of speculation. Take Dogecoin, an intentionally silly cryptocurrency named after one of 2013’s top memes. “The whole currency was started as a joke to make fun of the financial system, which is bizarre to think about,” one cryptocurrency expert observed. But TikTok users, sitting bored at home, recently sent its price soaring by 40% in 24 hours. The Twitter account associated with the currency warned that the frenzy could be "manipulation."
Cryptocurrency trading, which has had countless moments of collective mania, may soon take a big step towards the mainstream. Coinbase, probably the best known cryptocurrency trading platform, reportedly could go public this year and just hired a top lawyer from Facebook .
But you don’t need the blockchain to speculate on uncertain financial products. For the last several weeks David Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, has been making a show of buying stocks, comparing himself favorably to Warren Buffett. In June Portnoy streamed video of himself picking investments based on the random Scrabble letters he pulled out of a bag. He told Business Insider that the day-trading frenzy might slow once people have other things to do. “It's probably a lot harder to be day trading and paying attention to the stock market when you have a normal nine-to-five job,” he said.
These aren’t just disconnected oddities. Zero-fee trading has driven more amateur traders into the stock market. Retail investors now account for 20% of trading, double what it was last year, according to Joe Mecane, head of execution services at Citadel Securities, said on Bloomberg TV Thursday. “I think some of that is a reflection of the sophistication level of investors, some of that is a reflection of the more sophisticated tools that have been introduced to investors,” he said.
A defining feature of this moment is the Reddit community r/WallStreetBets, which encourages risky bets. One user posted Thursday about receiving a text from their dad expressing concern about cheap trading on Robinhood. The user purports to have responded simply with an image featuring the word “stonks” and an arrow upward, effectively joking in Internet speak that the stock market always goes up. Another user replied, “That should ease his concerns!”—Eric Newcomer
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