In the second morning of the O’Reilly Money:Tech conference,
Zecco’s very own Michiel de Boer joined several others in a panel titled “Collective
Money Management,” moderated by O’Reilly Media’s Jimmy Guterman. The panel focused on how community intelligence can
make a difference in people’s investing habits, and included Ken Kam
(Marketocracy), Steven A.
Carpenter (Cake Financial), Weiting Liu
(SocialPicks), Richard
'Rikki' Tahta (Covestor).
The panel kicked things off with a discussion of transparency. Jimmy asked why anyone would want to share their
portfolios and trades, since financial markets have been clouded by opacity for
so long. Everyone on stage seemed to
agree that this sort of secrecy doesn’t help anyone:
- Steve Carpenter: Retail
investors control less than 10% of market volumes. Individual investors can’t control
markets – but we can, collectively.
- Rikki Tahta had the best
comment of the day: People can benefit from watching successful investors
as they manage their own money. When you share, you’re showing your sausage,
not your sausage-making machine.
The conversation did take a more somber tone when talking
about a potential economic downturn. Day
trading, and a mainstream interest in investing, was hurt significantly when
the bubble burst in 2002. Diversity
turned out to be a common theme for everyone:
- Ken Kam: Time changes your
perspective. Day traders started
well, and got hurt when the market crashed.
- Rikki Tahta: There are lots
of different styles, markets, styles, etc.
You want to shine a big light on the whole, open marketplace and
find strategies that way.
- Michiel de Boer: We have a
broad range of investors at Zecco. We’re
not just day-traders (though we are those), but we are retirement
investors and long-term investors. The
key is to provide a set of tools for everyone to find things.
Overall, this was a fascinating panel, and we discussed so
much more than we can summarize in a blog post.
We hope that we can reconvene in a year or so, take a look back, and see
how these ideas have panned out for all of us.
Thanks to O’Reilly for putting this together, and to the other panelists
for making this such a great conversation.
Photo of Collective Money Management Panel from duncandavidson on Flickr