The finding has come from a survey of 2,134 retail investors, with 20 per cent nominating social media as their top source of information, followed by 12 per cent picking online forums.
The proportion only increases with new investors with 23 per cent of those trading for less than three years mentioning social media and forums (12 per cent) as key sources of information.
More seasoned investors were less likely, with those who had been trading for more than 10 years dropping to 8 per cent for social media and 9 per cent for online forums.
Glenn Leese, director of growth in Australia for TradingView commented there has been a change in the way traders learn, “hallmarked by increased collaboration and a reliance on a community”.
“As a result, a new set of tools and mediums are emerging, which also explains why we are seeing a much greater use of our platform,” Mr Leese said.
“In the past, trading education could be an isolating process for many retail investors, so the fact that they can now tap into each other’s knowledge, often in a creative and fun way, is a positive change.”
When asked about how their investments performed in 2020, seven out of 10 respondents (69 per cent) claimed they had made profits (51 per cent) or substantial profits (18 per cent).
“Even if we put these results in the context of an exceptional year on the markets, I do believe that community learning is having a beneficial effect on investors and their level of enjoyment,” Mr Leese said.
“The only caveat is the potential risk for investors to follow the wrong people, and I think online platforms acting as communities have a role to play in preventing this. For example, on TradingView, users can’t delete individual posts. This helps prevent them from removing posts with trading ideas that didn’t perform, and paint a misleading picture of their overall performance.”
The large majority of respondents (61 per cent) had been trading for less than three years, with one in four (28 per cent) starting in 2020. Nearly all of them (92 per cent) signalled their intentions to keep investing in the “long” or “very long” term.
When asked about the surge of new investors worldwide, a majority agreed that the pick-up was good news, but there should be more education available before they can access sophisticated products, or trade significant amounts of money (58 per cent).
TradingView has signalled it will soon launch new features centred around knowledge sharing. The platform saw its local new registered users more than triple in 2020, increasing by 340 per cent to 101,000 users. Traffic on the platform rose by 67 per cent in the 2020 year.
The surge contributed to significant revenue growth of 190 per cent year-on-year.
Sarah Simpkins
Sarah Simpkins is a journalist at Momentum Media, reporting primarily on banking, financial services and wealth.
Prior to joining the team in 2018, Sarah worked in trade media and produced stories for a current affairs program on community radio.
You can contact her on [email protected].
