Looking Back on 2022 + What's Ahead
Happy new year! In this post we'll share some learnings from 2022 and a bit about what's ahead for Share in 2023.
When we started working on Share, we had only a vague notion of an idea (“investing with friends”) and a general dissatisfaction with the existing investing products on the market. They felt more like tools modeled after the things professional traders did. In our mind, tools were features, while products solved problems. And we had lots of problems when it came to investing.
The Buying Problem
During 2022, with the invaluable feedback from our loyal group of beta testers, we honed in on the problems common to most (or at least many) consumer investors, and what we believe is a clear value proposition that solves our problems, and makes our investing lives better. Starting from first principles (“what needs do consumer investors have”) rather than features (“what order types does the stock market offer”) we think we arrive at something more useful for consumer investors.
In short, Share has started to solve what we call the buying problem. Every investor looking to invest their money needs to answer at least three things
what should I buy?
how much of it should I buy?
when should I buy?
The answer to these three questions is the answer to the buying problem. Credit goes to Nick Jiang, a great growth and marketing specialist who’s been working with us to help understand investor needs, for zeroing in on the buying problem.
We arrived at a simple approach to solving the buying problem. There are many more complex variations (nearly infinite) that you can take to investing in public markets, but for us we had a few requirements guiding Share’s development
it should be simple enough for anyone to understand; we aren’t building tools for professional investors, and a straightforward, accessible investing approach is important
it should work with consumer investor schedules and timeframes; consumer investors tend to i) be investing a portion of earned income that arrives every 2 weeks and ii) be investing for a long time horizon, typically years or even decades
it should offer enough control for consumers to play some role in their investments (no thanks, robo-advisors) but enough automation to fit in people’s busy schedules
Taking all these things into account, you inevitably end up at a product that looks something like this
dollar-cost averaging, aka fixed-amount and frequency recurring investments (in our case, weekly)
ETF-style portfolios based on a variety of criteria like sector (tech, semiconductors), personality (Warren Buffet), country (China, USA), macro-economics (inflation hedge); we call these Strategies
owning the underlying assets so you can customize them to suit your goals, if you so desire
The above combination solves the buying problem in the following ways
what do I buy? one or more strategies
when do I buy? every week
how much do I buy? equal amounts of all assets in the strategy, in the dollar amount that feels right to you1
What we’ve found is this approach helps consumers build a consistent investing habit, with a long term focus, that is simple and not overly time consuming. In short, it meets our goals above.
What’s Ahead… The Selling Problem
Which brings us to where we’re focusing in 2023. Buying is great. Dollar cost averaging is great. Consistent investing habits are great. Diversification is great. But if 2022 showed us anything, sometimes you may want to lock in some profits (or minimize some losses). So the buying problem is only one half of the equation. In order to be a full-featured solution for consumer investors, we need to tackle selling too. Of course, we can’t tell you when to sell (that would be investment advice) but we can offer you simple settings that, when met, will lock in profits or minimize losses without you having to monitor your investments every day or worry too much. Things like: Share, please lock in my profits when they hit 20% or better. Or maybe, please make sure I don’t take any losses of more than 20% (or at least do your best). You may be thinking these sound a lot like tools professional traders use (like a stop-loss order) and didn’t I say we don’t like those? Well, we think it’s all about the implementation. A good product will of course use the complicated tools under the hood, while abstracting the details and presenting them to the user in an easier way. Kinda like how a dishwasher still scrubs pots and pans with hot water and soap, but as a user you don’t really have to know what kinda magic is happening inside, you just know you want clean dishes.
Of course, investing is a little more fun and interesting than washing dishes, so we don’t want to automate the whole thing.
Anyway, that’s a little bit of what we’re thinking about in 2023. There’s more, but for that you’ll have to read our next newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed, you can do so below.
Miscellaneous Updates
Share has a TikTok now, run by Clare Noelle. Watch her be all cool and finance on the internet (her words) @ tiktok.com/@investwithshare.
Thanks for reading, and happy new year from the team at Share!
we can’t prescribe this one, firstly because everyone’s income is different and secondly because we’re not an investment advisor