Fragmentation. That’s the pain point we hear most often when asking people to describe their investing workflow. From interviewing over a thousand self-directed investors, we have now observed a consistent story.
Most of us — despite holding small amounts of money in newer platforms — start our trades from a more traditional brokerage. One that is often cluttered, archaic, and confusing, seemingly built for the masses but not actually well designed for anyone.
Ironically, these platforms rarely give us enough to know exactly how a stock is performing, so we load up Yahoo! Finance, dodging advertisements and sluggish load speeds to gather basic stats.
We might now have a low-level idea, but it’s difficult to craft a story for why we should place our money in this particular investment. How do analysts feel about its prospects? Did a recent earnings call highlight something important about the business?
This is where we’re forced to an array of other finance sites, in multiple tabs, each breaking our flow and asking for its own subscription. Eventually, many of us end up browsing raw files on the SEC’s database, and by this time we’re pretty much depleted and questioning what year it is.
After placing what we’ve learned into an Evernote or Notion document, we then add rows to an Excel spreadsheet to track the progress of the purchase. Many of us have kept these spreadsheets for years to clearly view our returns, either to see all our positions across different brokers or because we just dread navigating our broker's dashboard.
Now, something as simple as buying an additional share of stock will break our entire process.
Now, something as simple as buying an additional share of stock will break our entire process. Excel doesn’t speak to our broker, our Notion doesn’t sync our performance, and — when searching for our actions on a previous investment — we end up staring into a pool of fragmented applications with growing uncertainty around our decisions.
Why, in 2021, does thoughtful investing have to be this hard?
As self-directed investors, we’ve chosen to manage our own money to grow and enhance our nest egg. We trust ourselves to do the work required to make informed decisions. It’s empowering to take control of our finances.
But today’s tools work against us almost every step of the way. Much like in productivity, our prosumer needs in retail investing have been ignored for years.
From spending years in this idea maze, we're confident we can now say why that is.
Brokers spend time on execution and compliance. Unlike a nimble startup, they’re unlikely to build something with an opinionated design that represents the needs of today’s investors.
Portfolios need to be vertically integrated. People don’t want to switch brokers or be limited to one provider, they want reliable real-time sync.
Building on brokerages was difficult, if not impossible. Read-only APIs existed, but the stability and potential of these connections were poor. To succeed, you have to build your own integrations.
Launching something remarkable takes time and talent. Most companies are constantly under pressure to pluck only the lowest-hanging fruit. But in this space, there is no MVP.
Retail investors are more diverse than anyone acknowledged. Our waitlist today is composed of Executives, Engineers, Founders, and highly successful Entrepreneurs. The “gambler” stereotype is just beginning to fade.
Why this matters
To manage our money, something that is so greatly influential to our lives, shouldn’t there be a tool that we love to use each day?
We constantly see claims of a “Bloomberg” killer emerging — but what if that missed the point? Instead, imagine if we focused on what made Bloomberg such an indispensable tool for the professional; the keyboard shortcuts, the quality of data and the feeling of control in each interaction, and we brought that to today’s self-directed investor?
Much like in productivity, the prosumer’s needs in retail investing have been ignored for years.
What if something new were to be built, with no ads, no bloat and no distractions? Think of Yahoo! Finance built from the ground up with modern technology, wickedly fast, meticulously designed, and integrated directly with your portfolio.
You could discover, research and invest, all in one place. It would even bring you that all too often absent feeling in finance... joy.
What now?
After 3 focused years of research, design, and development, we're proud to say that’s exactly what we’re achieving with Fey. We’ve created the ultimate investing experience for the self-directed investor.
Fey is the ultimate investing experience built from the ground up, meticulously designed for the self-directed investor.
If you’re already part of the Fey family — thank you for helping us get here. There’s much, much more to come.
