New to investing and wondering where to find some advice from grizzled veterans?
Perhaps you’ve been investing for a while, and you want to test a new idea?
There are places where you can go to chew the fat with like-minded people about marketland, but one of New Zealand’s longest-standing investment forums is ShareTrader.co.nz, which has recently come under new management.
New owner James Graham has been reading the investor forum for 20 years, lapping up the collective wisdom of its users who’ve built up an impressive store of institutional knowledge.
And he’s got plenty of experience in running websites, with his company On This Day building and managing the onthisday.com, borneodictionary.com and hoyenlahistoria.com sites, but that doesn’t mean ShareTrader’s going to be full of rocket emojis and meme stock boostering.
As he says in his introduction announcing the ownership change: “There are plenty of other places to chat about investing but none of them have the signal to noise ratio that ShareTrader does.”
To the moon
ShareTrader’s tone is different to the likes of Reddit’s QueenStreetBets where users draw on its spiritual founder, WallStreetBets, with plenty of trading balance screenshots and feedback sought on US-centric portfolios.
You’re more likely get a transcript of an investor call, some back of the envelope workings on someone’s view of a company’s value, or the odd two cents from an NZX-listed company's chief executive.
“ShareTrader has the highest quality conversations of any forum – it’s better than any of its competitors in Australia and New Zealand,” Graham said in an interview. “People don’t just post rocket emojis on ShareTrader if the price goes up. It’s the least interesting thing you can say about a company but it’s the easiest.”
Graham said the high quality of the conversations and strong community is the result of a lot of work over the years by the previous owners, Tarawera Publishing, whose flagship publication is the financial adviser news site Good Returns.
The goal is to turn the ad-free and open access site into a financially sustainable platform, where investors can argue their investment cases and beginners can learn the ropes.
“We’d like to put it on an even keel, make it financially sustainable and then help it grow the number of small and medium investors in New Zealand and Australia,” he said.
Part of the jigsaw
Graham sees the role of forums as a cog in the wider capital markets, which are ailing around the world as companies shy away from listing on stock exchanges with plenty of deep-pocketed private avenues available as alternatives.
“It’s one-way traffic. Plenty of great New Zealand companies are being funded by private equity and the big end of town and not the average shareholder,” he said. “That’s bad for capitalism, bad for democracy and bad for the companies themselves.”
By staying out of the public eye, companies are missing out on a broader understanding of their business, which might be okay when they’re not hustling for a wide shareholder base but doesn’t do them any favours when trying to attract new talent.
So far, the response has been broadly positive, with the thread on the ownership change offering congratulations and best wishes, plus a smattering of recommendations around moderation.
The biggest change will be a software upgrade to provide a more stable platform, improve the mobile version and search function, and add images, although Graham would like to introduce an education element down the track, with evergreen content such as helping people learn to invest and understand different investing styles.
“Ultimately, we’d just like to be good stewards.”
Reporting by Paul McBeth. Image from Curious News.
Disclosure: Curious Media had some early talks with Tarawera Publishing about ShareTrader at the start of the year. Paul McBeth worked for Tarawera Publishing in 2009/2010.
