What could the PSE change to get retail investors more excited about the PSE?
Thank you to the record 216 readers who participated in this FSF survey and shared their suggestions for how the PSE could make the exchange more appealing to retail investors. I’m going to share (anonymized) some of the responses that I received. But first, given the huge number of responses, I thought it would be interesting to see if any overarching themes were present, and then provide some of the comments that were representative of that theme. Here we go!
#1: Lower fees / taxes (20%)
#2: Education campaigns and better marketing (18%)
#3: Improving accessibility and user experiences (15%)
#4: Enforcing regulations and protecting investors (15%)
#5: Offering more investment options (12%)
MB bottom-line: So many great suggestions! Some are immediately actionable (communicating in additional languages), and some depend on a series of fractional improvements first to become possible (like options trading). Some are well within the PSE’s control to lead the change on (board lots), and some are not (insider trading; it’s ultimately the function of the SEC to prosecute this). While our market is absolutely dominated by institutional investors (US markets are no different), I think that the depth and breadth of the crypto explosion demonstrate that there’s marketshare there to be won. In some ways, it feels like the existential crisis that music and movie studios faced in the 1990s and 2000s with piracy. I’m not saying that crypto traders are pirates (if so, then I’m one of them), but I’m just trying to make the point that the “product” here isn’t the PSE name or the companies that trade on the exchange. The product is just “investing”. If users can get their “investing” at a cheaper price and easier someplace else, that’s what they’re going to do. The way to fight, for the PSE, is not to improve the quality of their companies, but to reduce friction (cost and difficulty of use). The PSE has made strides in this area (PSE EASy is a good example, as is the coming evolution of GStocks and Maya trading), but companies don’t get credit for what they’re trying to do: they get credit for what actually gets done. They get credit for results. And here are 216
