The GameStop saga was breathlessly told in the media with all the cliches (David vs. Goliath, House Always Wins, etc.), but they missed the real developing story: retail investors are becoming empowered with both information and agency. The advent of the internet/smart phones allows anyone, who knows where to look, access to business data, earnings reports and a whole host of educational websites (like The Motley Fool and Investopedia) to become familiar with how the stock market works. That great leap forward in access to information started to challenge the hoarding of knowledge once held exclusively by financial advisors and those working on Wall Street. Online stock brokerages brought down commission fees per trade from $30 to $7 and then to $5. Robinhood next changed the entire game with commission free trades, thus freeing retail investors to do single share buys without giving extra money to anyone. Then Robinhood went a step further and offered fractional share purchasing, so small investors could buy part of large share price companies (like Amazon) without fees.
This is an incredible development. A teenager with a summer job can now sock away money in smart investments, allowing for the full power of compounding growth to do its work over time. This same teenager can accurately check on the health of those investments, in real time, to protect value. Professional financial advisors make their money on transactional fees and annual percentage commissions (2% of total holdings, or a higher percentage if performance based). Retail investors can now assume fiduciary responsibility for themselves and make better decisions to build wealth. You just need to know where to research, have access to a banking account and use Robinhood or one of its peers. Then you lay the financial foundation.
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” -Joan Didion