How Everyone Can Be An Investor

[Music] we're super excited to be here with you at Abu Dhabi Finance week I am Paul demad the CEO cigar and I have the pleasure of being joined by one of the greatest fintech entrepreneurs on Earth Yoni Asia uh Yoni has built and is the CEO of eoro the world's leading social investment network uh it was founded in 2007 today it has 20 million users in 100 countries and so it is my pleasure to spend a little bit of time with Yoni maybe Yoni we could start with you explaining to us what is a social investment Network so we started itoro in 2007 with the vision of opening the global markets for everyone to trade invest in a simple and transparent way and today we have over 34 million registered users who can trade stocks uh cryptocurrencies Commodities uh index AC's ETFs a variety of assets and when they trade it on itoro they automatically share their portfolio with everybody on the network so our customers through the social network can actually access that information see Millions hundreds of millions of Trades of our users their actual portfolio and track record and collaborate with one another and the unique part of voro is we've created the concept of copy tra which also enables our customers not only to follow and collaborate and communicate with our top investors from all over the world but will actually automatically copy investors on the platform wow is Warren Buffett a user because I'd love to copy him well uh not yet uh we actually do have a product also that enables you to copy waren Buffet uh through our smart portfolios which enables you to invest in thematic portfolios one of them being actually the 13f of Warren Buffett wow fantastic and so one of the big things we've seen in the last few years is the growing importance of retail investors in markets you have been one of the kind of facilitators of this you know major shift like how how are you seeing retail investing uh and investors impacting Global markets so first of all we've always been very big Believers uh in the value of retail investors and the importance of the democratization of capital markets to enable those retail investors to increase their knowledge and wealth over time uh I remember when I was a kid I was already passionate about Capital markets and I thought one day maybe I'll work in a large bank and and have to sort of learn from others people experience in person and have that personal connection I think today through social networking through the internet people from all around the world have uh access to an amount of data that 10 years ago 20 years ago was only available to the most sophisticated institutional investors and as we progress over time I think that access and those tools even become more important and easier especially when we're thinking today of uh providing access to AI tools to our customers those tools potentially are not even yet AV ailable for institutional investors and I think the markets in general have always been as efficient as the people participating in the markets and suddenly the amount of people participating in the markets increased significantly if you had only or mostly institutional investors in the part uh in the capital markets taking a significant part and impact on Capital markets today you have the wisdom of the crowds and also people investing in what they believe in right so what we see in itoro for example is a lot of our investors are investing in uh basically companies that we're all familiar with whether it's the apple and the Google Netflix and McDonalds and of the world right so a bias towards companies that retail investors are more familiar with or if we even think of new products like Bitcoin or crypto in general then those are very retail driven products because they actually started with retail investors coming to them first so I think we're seeing more data in the market more participation in the market and therefore markets are becoming more efficient for everyone around the world that's fascinating and ultimately that adds liquidity to markets and ultimately it probably also adds sources of alpha because in many ways you know generating investment returns is about having access to the information which we've agreed is more and more accessible but it's it's also about interpreting the information in different ways and more actors allow information for to be interpreted in different ways which ultimately for those that choose uh Choose Wisely uh uh that ends up being a source of alpha you're one of the largest fch investors in the world and you're an Institutional Investor yourself how do you see that sort of uh impacting cigar in your view of ftic suddenly the axis of millions or potentially hundreds of millions of investors into fintech into investing yeah well it's interesting because the way we're seeing uh you know a lot of these trading apps is actually a really interesting way to uh bring users into the financial markets I mean if you look at for example in Canada we've built a company well it's simple uh of our 2 million plus users a majority of them had never invested in fin financial markets before and so as you said earlier I view this as a major Trend towards democratization I view it as a major Trend towards education um and and ultimately if you can get people around the world invested in financial markets earlier uh the the the the wonder of the world which is compounding ends up having a much better impact and so in my in in my view that this democratization is in everybody's interest because by giving people access earlier allowing them to compound for longer you ultimately will end up with people with bigger nest EGS bigger Financial Security which will then lead to better Societies in my world and so so so so ultimately I think this is a net net benefit and then for overall financial markets it's all about liquidity and generating Alpha and I think by having more players you end up facilitating both of those things one of the trends that you mentioned earlier is the growth of of crypto um you've spoken a lot about crypto you've spoken a lot of block about blockchain how do you kind of separate those two things and how are you using them at itoro uh to drive your success so we've been very early on uh into crypto in itoro and that's exactly because I was always passionate about financial technology and as a syc entrepreneur early on I realized how aric still a lot of the current infrastructure in fin in finances so when I discovered Bitcoin I think this was late 2010 and did my first uh blockchain transactions or Bitcoin transactions started mining Bitcoin I saw basically the same aha moment I had when I discovered the internet uh uh about uh 20 years earlier or 15 years earlier uh and that is suddenly those systems can be connected right so blockchain is first and foremost I think this revolution is a technological Revolution which creates a paradigm shift for 247 uh self custody and therefore enables if we spoke about the democratization of capital markets toward investors I think the technology of blockchain eventually enables the tech the democratization of this industry to many more participants by creating Global standards by creating a 247 and therefore Global ledgers that enable transfer of assets and many more participants that could access uh this industry uh which historically has been a very hyperlocal industry with a small amount of participants in every sort of single Market I think crypto as an asset class and i' even say more than that probably Bitcoin uh represents something that as an asset class reminds me more of Commodities of gold uh deflationary asset uh I've always said that those assets especially Bitcoin because they're capped at 21 million that led probably to the largest discussion in human history uh around inflation around the printing of money uh and what is money and sort of the creation of money so that entire discussion especially when we think of our Global world where each of the countries where itoro operates in some cases have a different currency different levels of inflation I think suddenly having that Universal internet money is a very interesting play that we'll see keeps on evolving I'd say just one more thing uh other than Bitcoin is when we look at ethereum is our excitement from Smart contracts now o as a financial entrepreneur we've always seen how hard it is to create multi-party agreements between different financial institutions I think there the opportunity of smart contract to bring in new uh technology into this space is mind-blowing but we're still I think that will take some more time to embed also traditional Finance into the blockchain and into smart contracts yeah it's fascinating because so many of the critics of Bitcoin criticize it for its volatility and for its uncertainty but the reality is that if you look at the history of the world most currencies that were ever invented have failed and if you take a point of view from people in Argentina uh you know Bitcoin is actually quite stable uh relative to their alternative and so I find that a lot of the views on bitcoin tend to be you know very concentrated in the unique places in the world where there are stable currencies but that often miss the fact that a majority of the world doesn't actually benefit from that um in terms of uh the growth of itoro you mentioned a 100 countries uh you truly like a global platform what made you decide to go Global versus kind of local right from the beginning my view has always been that uh Gen Y investors uh uh or now genz as well investors have the interest in investing globally uh and think that sort of started with when we're thinking of retail investors and investing in US capital markets right because you have even when I was a kid I started trading NASDAQ listed stocks um but I think that sort of that aha moment was it's the same product and if the way people develop products today is very much based on a datadriven approach right looking at consumers how do they react to the product and that's sort of the magic of uh a lot of consumer companies is looking at the data of their customers our view was whether our customer is in Germany or France Italy Argentina the UK Australia Singapore or or Abu Dhabi uh that customers interests eventually are very similar and they're interested in uh as you said educating themselves about Capital markets and finding various Alpha opportunities uh that are suitable for them so there has always been our view that the opportunities and the consumer experience are by definition global because the customer is very uh has a global mindset and therefore that's what we're trying to develop for our customers yeah another one of the big trends that's happening right now that everybody's talking about is the retailzone we in Canada in our uh wealth platform weth simple have Incorporated some Alternatives in terms of the offer what is itoro doing in that space well we' love to take your Alternatives from Canada and bringing them on to the euro platform uh I think from our point of view we've seen the shift to for example interest rates uh so definitely we've we've seen a shift into ETFs into fixed income which we haven't seen at all in sort of the environment of low interest rates uh but we are very excited about the opportunity of the democratization of Alternatives and would would love to get your view on those opportunities uh in the market uh what type of alternatives are available for Canadians and how do you think that becomes an international phenomena from an infrastructure point of view and a product point of view yeah look I mean we're seeing very similar things to what you're saying I mean you really mentioned you know the Quest for yield I'd say yield products are are getting a lot of popularity globally you see it in the recent Flows at Blackstone and KKR Aries you know retail is really having a search for yield I'd say the hurdles to like Mass retail adoption alternatives are about education where in in many ways you know the consumer and the advisors interacting with those consumers often have to be educated around Alternatives and then the products themselves you know the traditional ways that institutional investors have invested in Alternatives is not necessarily suited for retail and so as a result firms like ours and KKR and Blackstone all need to basically spend the time building the right product for consumers to be able to access because ultimately you you know the needs for liquidity the needs for immediate deployment are very different in consumers um in consumer behaviors and so we are very excited about this at cigar and and ultimately building a lot of products uh to meet that demand uh well I would definitely say we'd be excited uh uh as we're launching now uh in the UAE uh and are hosted here by ad J to say that sometimes it's also finding the right regulatory approach to launch uh alternatives to retail investors and we'd love to find a way through itoro to offer cigar products to our clients in the UAE and Beyond I love it well Yoni you an amazing Visionary an amazing Builder there are you said 34 million people benefiting from your platform you're growing so fast the number I had was 20 million and so unbelievable success uh extremely excited to have spent the time with you here and we wish everybody an amazing Abu Dhabi Finance week with that thank you all and we'll see you soon thank you very much Paul