Sharesies investors have requested more education over new trading tools for the first time in one of the regular platform polls amid a sustained market downturn.
Leighton Roberts, Sharesies co-founder, said until now members had always rated “feature-based” services as the most-wanted add-ons but extra educational support made the number one ranking in the latest survey.
The mood shift comes as many of investors contemplate portfolio losses and ongoing market volatility at a level not seen since the platform launched in 2017.
Roberts said in aggregate Sharesies investors were at “break-even” after the 2022 market slump while more than 90 per cent of portfolios were “in the green until recently”.
“Our education is about providing investors high-level principles through tools and good search functions,” he said. “While we’re interested in financial advice, we try not to cross the line between education and giving personal advice.”
Sharesies does have financial advice provider licence – and was one of the first to receive a now-defunct robo-advice exemption – but has yet to offer such services to members.
According to Roberts, the educational efforts to date appear to have paid off with most of the platform investors not panic-selling during the recent share market turbulence.
“We haven’t seen a lot of selling,” he said.
Nonetheless, there has been a behavioural change among Sharesies members with short-term trading volumes “flat-lining” and account deposit-sizes shrinking by half compared to boom times.
But at the same time, Roberts said withdrawals have decreased while some members are building up cash levels, perhaps in store for future bargain-hunting.
He also played down the potential for a 1987-style back-lash where a severe market crash wiped out many NZ retail share investors, turning a generation or more off equities.
“The average Sharesies portfolio is only about $4,000,” Roberts said. “Investors are not leveraging their houses to get into the market. It’s actually a great time for them to learn about market cycles.”
Furthermore, he said funds (including exchange-traded funds – or ETFs) represent the majority of member portfolios: only two single stocks – Air NZ and Tesla – make the top 15 most popular investments.
Aside from ETFs sourced from both offshore exchanges and the NZX Smartshares range, Sharesies currently only offers managed funds from five local providers – but that’s about to change with a large batch of new managers scheduled to join the platform in the next couple of months.
The Wellington-based business also has KiwiSaver on the agenda but Roberts said any potential launch was some distance away.
“We’re not certain whether [launching a KiwiSaver scheme] is something we would do ourselves or with a partner,” he said.
At any rate, Sharesies has enough on its plate with an Australian campaign that has seen it accrue 50,000 investors or so since going live last year, bringing the total platform membership across the two countries to almost 600,000 with just over $2 billion in assets “in custody”.
The firm, valued at about $500 million in its latest capital-raise, employs almost 200 people.