I thought this tweet by one of the world’s most well known economists and market commentators was interesting. It seems thst fractional shares are coming to the attention of main stream investors. I also heard Jim Cramer recently recommend fractional share to investors on his Mad Money programme, saying it makes taking a stake in expensive shares possible.
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Though not about pies and fractional shares, today’s Sunday Times had a story about Robinhood in the business section. Trading 212 and Freetrade are also mentioned. Many sceptical comments from readers written in the comments below the article. Typical is
Professional analysts, backed by years of experience and training, find it hard to pick winning shares and often struggle to outperform the market. Those with little knowledge will lose their money.
Since when are professional analysts so concerned about retail investors? I always thought they were after dumb money. Apparently they realize that dumb money is getting smarter. I smell a little fear on “Wall Street”.
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I thing so far retail investors were “too small” in volume to let them worry about missing the easy money from Robinhooders.
I think the tweet from Mohamed El-Erian is a positive thing. He recognises that investing/trading has recently become much easier for small investors because of the advent of fractional share dealing and 0 commission.
The Sunday Times article was written as if all users of Robinhood, Freetrade and Trading 212 were speculative day traders using leverage to take high risk positions. The article fails to appreciate that these platforms are great for those long-term investors who want to save on a regular basis, but who cannot afford to buy an entire share of AMZN all at once. I think Mohamed El-Erian and Jim Cramer understand that.
As someone says in the comments on Mohamed’s tweet “Robin Hood for all its faults has done great things in making investing accessible.” But another says “Who buys $5 worth of stock, and why?”
Here is Jim Cramer’s article. “Think Fractional Shares Look Boring? I’ve Got a Story for You” a gift from the electronic brokers that simply isn’t being used and yet makes so much sense.
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I personally think a lot of so called professional investors out there are threatened by people getting into the investment market themselves and not requiring their services. They are facing an existential crisis! They want to convince everyone that they are too dumb to be able to invest wisely. Most of them with all their so called knowledge and expertise still lose peoples money anyway. It’s not like 1920 when access to information was a privilege of the few. Nowadays you don’t even need a degree to invest successfully, just common sense will do just fine. These days there are no more secrets to success because everything is out there in the open and free to access. They want to justify being paid millions for losing people’s money and then tell us we can’t lose our own money for free 
This is why 99% of wealth is distributed among 2% of the population. I say power to the people and the democratisation of wealth management is good for wealth redistribution! So don’t anyone be discouraged or fooled into believing they shouldn’t be doing it themselves.
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PS. Who needs a fund manager when you’ve got T212 https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OGC.4c97e8e91c35881f70d082124df02008&pid=Api&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FmkBZzFW56vHva%2Fgiphy.gif&ehk=LvHr1OEVU5HHZmcZPv3lwFk8hJSpQKQUbXistNtWVpU%3D
Exactly why it’s named Robinhood. There’s very few excuses to being broke these days in developed countries. Anyone can invest with as little money as they like. It’s your own choice if you want to spend all your money on crap and live above your means. Don’t come running when you realise you’re broke and have to work until you die just to survive
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