⚡ Zash Community Update 13: The Ethereum Craze, Creator of the Week, & More...
Building the future of retail investing
Dear All,
Happy Wednesday!
Each week we update you on our latest happenings, developments, product updates, and more.
Zash: Changing the Game for Retail Investors
Zash was mentioned as one of the start ups changing the game for the retail investor in the UK, in this post by Koia (the leading alternatives platform). Here's a quote from our CEO:
”Investing really sucks for new retail investors. Coming from a risk averse, Indian family I made my first investment far later than I should have and it was via a friend, not an advisor or reading Bloomberg. New investors not in the “right” type of environment are often frozen with confusion, anxiety and fear. I believe this is one of the largest social mobility challenges today. The better we can tackle this, the better we can close the wealth gap for millions around the world." - Parit Patel, co-founder of Zash
Creator of the Week 🧠
In this week’s installation of our Creator of the Week spotlight series, where we highlight some of our most engaged Creators across the community, we have the CTO and Founder of Intelligent Networks: Bradley Gram-Hansen. Here’s a little bit from Bradley:
What do you generally like to invest in? I have mixture investments between high dividend low growth, index funds & tech based ETFs, growth and high risk (crypto, biopharma etc), which is roughly split 25%, 55%, 10% and 10% respectively. I mainly stick to tech, finance and companies that have a lot of innovation, where I know about the tech stack and where I understand the underlying technology and market. Property based funds can offer good dividends, but, there is always risk since property at times can be very volatile, especially with the changing dynamics of cities. Pandemics are not new and if you look at history for the past 300 years they have been increasing in frequency, so be careful about assuming that cities will be the future. I think there will be a lot of changes to the dynamics of cities over the coming years because of better connectivity and more relaxed laws on visas globally - something that wasn't an option in previous pandemics. You can already see the effect from HSBC, Natwest, the big four, many top tech firms DeepMind, Google, Facebook, Oracle, Twitter etc, who are all moving towards micro-offices and hybrid remote-work environments. Also, the increase in remote working positions - this was already growing at a substantial rate before the pandemic around 50% YOY, the pandemic has only accelerated that change, plus an increasing number of remote-first companies. Another thing to be careful of is the news that you consume. Most of the media, including ad focused tech companies: Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. want you to consume. They are funded primarily by adverts, and an adverts goal is to get you to consume. So be very careful when read articles about "people wanting to consume", "people dying to get back to the office" etc. In fact, have a look on the comment sections on articles like that, and you will probably note a very different tone, i.e. FT comment section.
How would you describe your investing style? I like to make sure that I make around 10-20% a year, so I would say I am pretty conservative and stay away from CFDs - although playing the market both ways is sensible. When compounded that is much more than just 10-20% a year and I do actively manage things if I think there will be a down turn - i.e I sold most of my portfolio last February before the markets turned down as manufacturing and consumption data then was painting a very different picture to the media. I then brought back my positions in April, so 2020 was a good year - but, that was still luck. I don't think it is wise to chase the money, but given that I am still young, having a small part of my portfolio dedicated to high risk asset seems sensible. Do your own research and be comfortable with what you could lose. Try to remove emotions - I find this challenging to do and one of the best strategies I've found is don't manage things too much, it is usual best to just do your research, buy and hold. Last year was an exception.
What industry/company’s future you’re excited by and why? AI, Space and anything related to physics - because they are the things I know. I am fascinated by digital ledger tech too in the fin tech space.
What do you love about the Zash Community? It is nice to have a place where you can share opinions about investments in a rational way.
Reading of the Week 💡
That’s all for now and we’ll see you next week,
-Team Zash
P.s. it seems that some of you have had our emails going to your Promotions tab. In order to train the algorithm, you can drag the email into your inbox - that should sort things out :)