Best and brightest convene at Trader’s Summit in L.A.
November 03, 2015 — BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Where do engaged investors plan to put their next investing dollar?
Despite recent market fluctuations, according to a recent Fidelity Investments® poll of engaged investors at its Oct. 6 Los Angeles Traders’ Summit, 75 percent continue to show a preference for stocks.
ETFs elicited a strong response, too: of those who invest in ETFs, more than half (54 percent) expect to use them more frequently in the next twelve months.
These savvy investors also stayed the course during the market volatility in Aug. and Sept.—with only 10 percent taking money out, while the remainder stayed in the market (49 percent) or found bargains and invested more (41 percent).
Investors’ Choice
Further, when asked which investment vehicle they plan to use most in the next 12 months, investors chose:
- Individuals securities: 41 percent
- ETFs: 27 percent
- Actively managed mutual funds: 18 percent
- Passively managed mutual funds: 9 percent
- Options: 6 percent
This enthusiasm is perhaps tempered by the fact many of these same investors also admit they wish the process for finding the best investment could be easier. In fact, half (50 percent) of those responding found it somewhat or very difficult to pick the best stocks for their portfolio and 44 percent of ETF users felt the same way about picking the best ETFs.
“It’s telling that even experienced investors who trade frequently consider the process of stock and ETF selection to be a challenging experience,” said Ram Subramaniam, president of Fidelity’s retail brokerage business. “This feedback reaffirms our commitment to ongoing innovation on behalf of customers to make investing easier and why we’re so excited about new capabilities we’re rolling out, including Notebook, Stock Screener and ETF Screener capabilities.”
Savvy Investors Bullish About Tomorrow
The polling took place during Fidelity’s Traders’ Summit in Los Angeles, where highly engaged investors gathered in-person and via Webcast to hear from the trading world’s best and brightest. Among the insights gained, investors appear bullish on the market, with nearly half (40 percent) expecting it to be up by five percent or more by year end.
Excerpts from The Trader’s Summit:
- Solar stars
One industry that received a lot of attention was solar, which is innovating through efficiency.
“Two things matter for solar power,” says Gavin Baker, manager of the Fidelity® OTC Portfolio. One is the increase in cell efficiency, which has been increasing monotonically at 8 to 10 percent per year for 20 years. Battery storage is the other, and it has been increasing monotonically for decades. You look at those two curves, which are so well established, and I think the idea that very many people on planet earth will be driving a gasoline-powered car in 30 years is really hard for me to believe.”
Solar stocks have been under pressure in recent months, but the long-term performance has been strong. The NYSE Bloomberg Global Solar Energy Index has cooled roughly 45% since the May 2015 peak, but it’s still up more than 90% since late 2012.
Baker is a believer in solar as an investment opportunity and thinks certain companies are better positioned to benefit from increasing efficiency in the industry. “I own SolarCity (as of October 6, 2015), which is one of the few solar companies that can benefit from declining prices of solar panels,” Baker says. “They are the dominant installer of solar power in the U.S. They have 10 times more market share than their number-two competitor, and they have some cool technology. They just announced their own solar cell.” - Big ideas in big dataIt’s telling that even experienced investors who trade frequently consider the process of stock and ETF selection to be a challenging experience
Another industry whose innovations are shaping not only the businesses in their sector, but also vast swaths of the entire market, is big data.
Indeed, the usage of big data analytics is experiencing massive growth because of how much information is being created. According to IBM, 294 billion emails are sent every day, more than one billion Google searches are made every day, and 10 billion mobile devices will be in use by 2020.1 These are just a few of the multitude of ways that we are creating massive amounts of data, and the need to collect and analyze this information is growing rapidly.
Nelli Oster, investment strategist in BlackRock’s Multi-Asset Strategies Group, believes big data has the potential to transform a variety of businesses and could be a multiyear investment theme.
“Big data is being used currently, for example, in financial services in more quantitative investment management,” Oster says. “Health care is another application for big data, where you can combine patients’ health records with their insurance information and then with other medically relevant information.” - Internet still has room to grow
It may not seem like a new and innovative industry. However, Fast Money contributor and Triogem Asset Management cofounder Tim Seymour thinks Internet stocks remain an attractive place to invest.
“I still think that the Internet, and Internet usage globally, is the most exciting place to be,” Seymour says. “The growth of the Internet is still such a global phenomenon, and it’s so underpenetrated… There are a lot of different ways to play it.”
That underpenetration may seem foreign to those who can’t imagine a world without the Internet, but the International Telecommunication Union estimates that, as of 2014, 40% of the world population is still not using the Internet, and many of these people are in the developing world. As the world population increases, and Internet usage continues to rise because of more users gaining access, this investment theme could tap this future organic growth.
Link here for additional insights from the Traders’ Summit, which was designed to provide Fidelity customers with the tools, research, technology, and thinking to improve their approaches to investing, and featured a panel of experts discussing how they come up with their investing ideas.
Looking for a simpler way? Help is here.
To make it easier for investors to generate and capture investing ideas in a more streamlined fashion, Fidelity has been working to enhance its stock and ETF research experience. Among the new innovations:
Notebook: An online tool that allows customers to capture and organize in a single location investing ideas, such as excerpts of articles and other personal notes and insights that can be symbol and/or theme-specific. The Notebook provides ready and secure access to an investor’s most relevant insights, anywhere they desire. Notebook is available currently to Fidelity customers through Active Trader Pro® and in Nov. 2015 will roll out to Fidelity mobile apps, Fidelity.com and the Stock Snapshot.
ETF Screener: The ETF Screener offers a new, simpler way to find ETFs in categories such as “Match an Index,” “Sectors or Industry,” and “Income Generating” and that match an investor’s investment goals. The tool provides users with a customizable experience that takes the guesswork out of ETF investing. The new ETF Screener will be available on all devices to customers in Dec. 2015.
Stock Screener: This stock research page is accessible on, and responsive to, multiple devices, and is currently available to all customers and to non-customers as a demo on the Fidelity Learning Center. By default, it displays the most relevant stock information investors need to make investment decisions. Offering faster access to positions, users also can access quick links to find new ideas and see how they may impact their current holdings.
Portfolio Events: An online tool that proactively identifies upcoming events, such as dividend distributions, earnings announcements and Equity Summary Score changes that may impact individual securities within a customer’s portfolio. It is available currently on Fidelity.com’s Portfolio Summary page to a pilot customer group, with plans to make it available to all customers by year end.
“Using a combination of these new tools, investors should be able to achieve greater confidence when it comes to selecting stocks and ETFs,” said Subramaniam.
