Share is now an SEC-registered investment advisor. This means we will file annual disclosures with the SEC (and you), are legally required to put your interests ahead of our own, and are able to give you investment advice.
When we first started building Share, we were creating self-directed investment groups where people could share information, ideas, and pick stocks together by voting. Like a modern-day investment club. This was in the peak pandemic era. WallStreet Bets was on everyone’s mind (and in the news), GameStop was blowing up, and the idea of collaborative investing seemed like it was about to take the world by storm.
A year or so later, we’ve learned a lot about what modern consumer investors need, your pain points, and how to make investing easier and better for you. Which brings us to the next step in our company evolution.
Some things haven’t changed. We are still, and always will be, a recurring investing product focused on dollar-cost averaging. We firmly believe this is the most suitable way to invest for the vast majority of consumers. Timing the market requires rigorous analysis and research, and if you’re not prepared to (or don’t have the time to) do that, you’re better off to continually invest a little bit over time. We also think it suits people who are investing out of their income - since you get paid every two weeks, why not invest on a similar schedule? Results from our customer’s investments have validated this theory, time and again we’ve heard that our customers portfolios on Share perform better than their portfolios on traditional brokerage products. And the period we’ve been operating, throughout 2022, was one of the toughest financial markets in recent history.
We’re also still focused on (relatively) diversified portfolios of equal-weighted stocks. Diversification and equal-weighting serve the same purpose as dollar-cost averaging; just like it's strategic to avoid investing all your capital at one point in time, likewise with one stock.
So what’s changed? We’ve successfully completed our registration with the SEC as an internet-based investment advisor. We did this because it became clear that while consumers have a desire to invest and play a role in directing their capital, they want some help and going it alone is too much work. And in order to give you that help, starting in the form of our pre-made Strategies, we need to be registered.
Strategies are just that - pre-made baskets of stocks designed to meet a specific goal. That goal might be exposure to a sector like Semiconductors, Renewables, or Oil and Gas. Or investing in a portfolio derived from a well known investor like Warren Buffett or Nancy Pelosi. We build and maintain these Strategies through both qualitative and quantitative analysis, taking into account the goals of the strategy, diversification, volatility, the management team, and the firms’ historical performance, among other things. For more details on our methods of analysis, see our Brochure we filed with the SEC.
As a reminder, you can backtest all of our current Strategies (as well as build your own) using our Dollar Cost Averaging Calculator which simulates weekly equal-weight investment using up to 5 years of historical market data. You can also modify them (add or remove stocks) to make them your own.
It’s important to note that Share is not currently a discretionary investment adviser. Most robo-advisors just take your money and invest it, and you have very little say in what it goes into (beyond a basic set of risk-assessment questions). Share leaves you in control. You can add or remove stocks from any of our Strategies, disregarding our advice as you see fit, or even build your own from scratch. You maintain full control of your money. Our goal is to save you time, help you learn, and do our best to help you invest better than you would on your own.
Being an investment advisor means that we have a fiduciary obligation to not put our interests ahead of yours, when giving you anything that could be considered investment advice. It also opens up some exciting new possibilities to help you invest better with less time and effort. Things like recommending automatic profit taking, performing automatic portfolio rebalancing, and even offering fully managed, hands-off portfolios. More on this soon, stay tuned.
If you have any feedback or ideas for us, please reach out at hi@tryshare.app.
Thanks for reading!