JOHN WINTERS | Superhero
JOHN WINTERS | Superhero
The first thing you need when you begin to invest is a brokerage account. It’s the platform that you use to buy and sell shares & ETFs. It can be daunting to start with but John Winters is committed to making things as easy as possible for new investors. John is the CEO of Superhero, a digital broking app that allows investors to trade shares and ETFs simply and cheaply.
We spoke about the mechanics of placing an order and what you need to know about record keeping and tracking your portfolio.
John shared some tips on long term investing and some of the most popular shares and ETFs in the Superhero investment community.
“It's the diversification that gives you exposure to multiple sectors. And when you have one sector performing really badly, you've got other sectors that are performing really well. So your overall performance can go very well, but you've got pockets that won't perform well. If you took in individual exposure, you may be in one of those pockets that perform badly. And then you've got no upside or no protection to the rest of the market. So diversification really is key.”
Episode transcript follows this brief message
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Phil (22s):
G'day and welcome back to Shares for Beginners. I'm Phil Muscatello. The first thing you need when you begin to invest is a brokerage account. It's the platform that you use to buy and sell shares and ETFs. It can be daunting to start with, but my guest today is committed to making things as easy as possible for new investors. Hello, John Winters from Superhero.
John (42s):
G'day Phil, how are ya?
Phil (43s):
Good, good thanks. So John, Superhero is one of the new kids on the FinTech startup block. Before we start talking about the platform itself, tell us some of your story, how you got to this point.
John (54s):
Yeah, sure. So my background, I started in financial services about 15 years ago actually. Wanted to be a stockbroker, had watched a bunch of movies and sort of really set my sights on the space. You know, for all the right reasons, not for some of the wrong reasons that we've seen in Hollywood
Phil (1m 10s):
Was it The Big Short one of those movies?
John (1m 12s):
It's definitely one that I've, that I've watched. Yeah. But looking at the space, you know, it's something that I really wanted to get into and actually called the CEO of a stockbroking firm, managed to get a meeting with him and, you know, he said, "Oh look, we've got nothing at the moment, but give me a call back next week." And ended up calling him pretty much every day for three months until he, he probably felt sorry for me and gave me a job. And that was the, that was my sort of line in. But what I saw in the space was it was just so archaic, everything about the industry. And, you know, when we're looking at private wealth or you're looking at investing, at that time it was late 2007. So just leading into the GFC, the markets were just going ballistic and then very quickly dropped off a cliff.
John (1m 58s):
But it was all paper based, people would call in, make a trade. It would be a paper ticket that would be taken over to a trading representative who'd put it into the market. But that's in the 2000s. And, you know, fast forward, I then worked at Macquarie and things had gotten a little bit more automated by then. But just in terms of getting set up, getting an account set up, it was just so paper-based and so difficult. It didn't need to be that hard. And I went through a process where I helped list Zip on the stock exchange. So it started out as ZipMoney at the time, but it was very early, sort of, stages of buy now pay later. And they're doing real time ID verification, real time of issuing credit.
John (2m 42s):
So making a credit decision and issuing credit in real time. And a lot of those employees, those early employees were coming to me saying, "Can we buy some shares?" They wanted to buy some Zip shares. You know, in the early days at 20, 30 cents. And you know, it was an eight page account form, it was a financial services guide, it was a PDS, it was $125 brokerage plus GST. But hang on, I just want to buy two grands worth of shares. And I knew that had to be the turning point. But then what some of these people were saying to me was "I don't have a lot of money. Can I use my super to invest in shares?" And that was sort of the critical point for Superhero.
John (3m 23s):
So, you know, hence the name, super's in our name. So we started out on a path to build a super fund that you could use to invest in things that you wanted to invest in. That was the foundation of Superhero.
Phil (3m 36s):
So technology is a big part of it obviously, and you're a financial services guy. So you needed help with tech. Tell us about your co-founder Wayne Baskin and his role in Superhero. He was the one that crunches the numbers and makes up the algos and all that.
John (3m 49s):
Yeah. So Wayne's actually been a good mate of mine for, you know, 15, 20 years. So I've known him for a long time and I sort of came up with the idea for Superhero and knew I wouldn't be able to do it by myself. So I gave Wayne a call. He was flat out with Booktopia, he's been with Booktopia for a number of years. But I said, "Look, I need some advice. I need some help with this." And I gave him sort of the elevator pitch and he said, "All right, I'm in." I said, "Yeah, great. Because I really need some advice on this." He said, "No, I'm not going to advise you on this. I'm in. I want to be, you know, fully committed to this." So he has been instrumental in building the platform that we've got today. He comes from an e-commerce background, so completely different skillset to me.
John (4m 30s):
And he's questioned everything when it comes to financial services. Why do you have to do that? And my responses were "Because that's how you do this." He's like, "But why?" So we have taken that new approach, completely new look at how things are done. And he's driven a lot of that user experience.
Phil (4m 49s):
I guess it's also to do with the way traditional online broking, which has been around for quite a long time, has still got a lot of legacy behind it. Whereas you're coming from a point of view of building a brand new thing from the ground up.
John (5m 2s):
Yeah. Look, I think, you know, you look at the beginning of online share trading and CommSec was the front runner there. They obviously had the power and still have the power of Commonwealth Bank behind them. But I think it was 1999, there were a million online trading accounts in Australia. CommSec had over 600,000 of them. So they've always been the gorilla. It was quite interesting when we were starting up, we went and looked at all the cached website pages from CommSec going back to, sort of ,2001. And you can see there's this evolution and that's a really good example. The industry has evolved over time. So we went from chalkboards to computers, to spreadsheets, to those spreadsheets being on a website and those websites have then evolved.
John (5m 45s):
So you could see that evolution and I'm using CommSec as the example, you could see that evolution over time, which was quite fascinating, you know, fascinating bit of research. But we've sort of gone from zero. We've taken new slate. What can we build and how can we build it better?
Phil (6m 1s):
It's interesting as well when you think about Booktopia. Sorry, I know we've gone off topic a little bit, but Booktopia are a great example of how a traditional business has taken new technology and turned it into a great business that's generating excellent revenue.
John (6m 17s):
Well, you look at some of those businesses that have had huge success. So whether it's Afterpay, whether it's Booktopia, it's those legacy businesses that someone comes in, it's not a new business model that no one has ever thought of. You know, when you look at Zip, you used to walk into Harvey Norman, you'd go and say, "I want to buy the TV." You go sit in the corner, fill out a 20 page credit form so you can buy your TV. So buy now, pay later has been around for years. It's the same with Booktopia, you know, they've digitized the bookstore. So I guess that's the same with us. We haven't created something new in terms of, you know, what we offer. We're just doing it a different way. And we're digitizing the entire process.
Phil (6m 55s):
And you started off with a couple of great investors from Zip and Afterpay as well. That'd be great support.
John (7m 2s):
Yeah, no, it is great to have that support. You know, a couple of interesting people, Larry Diamond, the CEO and co-founder of Zip and Nick Molnar, the CEO and co-founder of Afterpay. You're fierce rivals in their space, so to have them both on the record as investors is definitely an interesting one. We haven't had a shareholders meeting with both end up. It would be a bit of an interesting one. But yeah, to have them both on is fantastic for, you know, I think tapping into their knowledge and understanding the journey that they've been on, being able to leverage some of those lessons is fantastic for us.
Phil (7m 36s):
Okay. Well, let's have a look at Superhero closeup. So we're talking to beginner investors today, people who are taking their first steps, what are the main steps that investors can take with Superhero? How do you make your first trade?
John (7m 47s):
Yeah, so we've tried to make this process as simple as possible. So to sign up, we do need to capture some personal information. There's regulatory requirements around that. So we do a full ID verification on you as you sign up. most of the time, we don't need you to give us any more information than your name, address and date of birth. And we use that information to do a full ID verification on you. In terms of funding your account, we use pay ID. We also give you your own BSBN account number. So you've got your own Superhero cash account. We call it your Superhero wallet. You can fund that in real time and you can put as much or as little as you want. You do need a hundred dollars to make your first investment though.
John (8m 26s):
So once you have funded your account, and it's quite simple, you get your pay ID, you can go into your online bank account and, you know, whether you bank with one of the big banks or one of the smaller banks, you put that pay ID in and you can transfer money in and then to place a trade, you'll identify which company you want to invest in. And we can have that chat as well. But I think the biggest struggle is identifying, you know, which company or which ETF you do want to invest in. But once you have made that decision, you know, it's as simple as clicking on the buy button, choosing what is a market order? What is the limit order? We can chat about that as well, but, you know, entering the dollar amount or the number of shares you want to buy and hitting the button. We do have security through the process so you do need to put a two factor authentication code in.
John (9m 10s):
But yeah, it's as simple as that, that you can go, through fund your account and really be in the market in minutes.
Phil (9m 16s):
So there's really four kinds of fields you need to fill in and that's the, either the dollar amount or the number of shares that you're buying and whether that is at limit or at market. Just talk us through that.
John (9m 28s):
Yeah, so the market and limit orders are the two sort of basic types of orders that you can have in the market. There are more complex orders, stop-losses and things, but if we just stick to the market and limit, a market order allows you to buy a dollar amount of shares at the market price. Now the market price is really interesting. The market price is not the last price. So if you see BHP at $33, that does not mean market price. And that is a mistake some people have made. So for a buy order, a market buy order, your order will trade with the lowest seller. So if you've got someone buying at a dollar, someone's selling at $2 and the last price is a $1.50, if you put on a market order, you won't buy at $1.50, you will actually buy a $2.
John (10m 20s):
That's the lowest seller in the market. If you placed a limit order, that allows you to select the maximum or the minimum price you want to pay when you buy or when you sell. So if there was a buyer at $1 and there was a seller at $2 and you placed a limit order, you could place a limit order at $1.50. But again, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to trade because there's no seller at $1.50. So a limit order is fantastic. You could then sit at $1, at $1.50. If someone does say, "You know what, I want to sell my shares right now", they could trade $1.50. The next buyer is at a dollar.
John (10m 60s):
So you're at a better price. And on the sell side it's the same. So, you know, if there's a seller at $2, you could put a limit order at $1.90, you could put a limit order at $2.20. So it does limit the amount that you would get back or the amount that you would spend. So yeah, those are the two sort of critical order types. They're the two order types that are available on Superhero. We will introduce are the contingent orders they're called, which has stop-losses. And that basically means when a share price gets to a point, it then triggers a buy or a sell order.
Phil (11m 36s):
Do you also have a time for the order? Like, is it a good for day only order or good for a couple of weeks?
John (11m 41s):
Yeah. Great question. So we do have an expiry, so it's an auto set expiry. Orders will expire after 30 days. So that's 30 calendar days. So if your order is sitting in the market, so that's the limit orders, market orders typically trade in the same day. If you place the market order over the weekend, it would be held until Monday morning and then be placed into the market. But if you placed a limit order that will sit in the market at your limit price, if it doesn't trade and it will expire. It'll basically just get deleted from the market after 30 days.
Phil (12m 12s):
That's something that you should really be aware of, that you might have an order in there and it hasn't been filled. And then suddenly you don't really want to buy it anymore because the prices have moved so far. You should be aware of that and get rid of that order yourself.
John (12m 25s):
Yeah. So on the platform, you'll be able to see that’s under our pending orders tab. What we also do if you're buying some shares, so if you had a hundred dollars in your account and you put an order in, a limit order in to buy a hundred dollars’ worth of shares, that order would sit there. We actually restrict that a hundred dollars. So you'd still hold it in your account, but you wouldn't be able to place another order. You wouldn't be able to withdraw that money while that order is still in the market.
Phil (12m 48s):
So, okay. You've done it, you've been successful, you've bought some shares or ETFs. What about tracking performance?
John (12m 55s):
Yeah. So performance is obviously a big one and it's something that we really add a lot of colour to. So we track all of the, all of the realized gains. So that's when you sell a share, you know, whether you made a gain or a loss, but we also track very closely your unrealized gains. So if you buy something at a dollar it's trading at $2, you made a hundred percent. So we show all of that and we do take into account all of your buys and sells in that stock. So if you've, if you buy shares at a dollar, you buy shares at $1.50, you buy shares at $2, we will display that your average price, there is $1.50, and then show you the performance on your average price, as well as how your portfolio is going for the day. You can see it over all time and you can also download comprehensive tax reports as well, which show you all of your performance, all of your transactions since your account started or for the financial year.
Phil (13m 45s):
Yeah. That can get really confusing if you've bought at different prices into the same share, because you know, trying to track that's a nightmare. I mean, I've tried to put spreadsheets together for that, I know what you mean.
John (13m 55s):
Yeah, no, that's something that, you know, from my experience in my career, we used to charge clients 1% per annum for those reports. And, you know, having Wayne in the team, you know, he's like, "But it's just a report that I build once. And then you just click download and it gives you all of that information. Like it doesn't cost anything." So yeah, we've got that as a value add in the platform. So you're not chasing spreadsheets and trying to work out what it is for the tax man.
Phil (14m 21s):
What about dividends? How are they tracked?
John (14m 24s):
Yeah. So dividends are all paid into your Superhero wallet, into that cash account. We do have a dividend report as well. So you'll be able to see all of the dividends that get paid, all of the franking credits, if there's any foreign tax credits. So that again is part of that comprehensive tax reporting. Some of the other platforms do offer that. Typically you just get a dividend statement in the mail. We try not to use any paper here. It's all digital, but yeah, you get paid the cash dividends into your cash account on the platform. And this reports to give you an indication of, you know, how much you got paid. It's on the platform as well, you can go to activity, it shows you the dollar per share that you get paid as well as the total amount. That's all visible on the platform.
Phil (15m 3s):
And you can take that information and give it to your accountant, or even prepare your own tax return from what you're given from the platform?
John (15m 10s):
Correct. So you can view, or you can download those income statements. And yeah, I just hand that over to my accountant and they prepare my tax return for me. If you're doing it yourself, it's just as simple as well. You can get that realized capital gain report for, you know, how much you've actually made during the financial year and the same for income. And it splits out all the franking credits, all those tax credits as well.
Phil (15m 38s):
And one of the major differences is you can invest from a hundred dollars rather than the traditional $500 so it makes it a lot easier for people to start with smaller amounts.
John (15m 46s):
Yeah, it goes back to that accessibility piece. So, you know, I think the $500, sort of limit, it's one of those, sort of, archaic price points that was probably put in back in the late 90s and no one's ever really gone back to look at it. So yeah, we've got a hundred dollar minimum and you know, people love that.
Phil (16m 2s):
Is that really how it works? I've always wondered why it's a $500 minimum but it's just something that was set in cement?
John (16m 9s):
Yeah, according to the ASX, a holding under $500 is called an unmarketable parcel. We just sort of questioned it and said, "But why?" And if you look at some of the banks' online trading platforms that charge 20 or $30 a trade, you know, buying a hundred dollars’ worth of stock at $20, that's 20% brokerage. Like that's not feasible. So there's probably a whole bunch of things that went into determining that $500 limit. We don't charge brokerage on ETFs. So you could invest a hundred bucks into ETFs, it doesn't cost you anything. And I think those are some of the, sort of the barriers that we're breaking down.
Phil (16m 43s):
So what are the brokerage fees? Just run us through those.
John (16m 47s):
Yeah. So we've come out with $5 brokerage flat fee. So it's not a percentage. It doesn't change depending on how much you invest.
Phil (16m 55s):
You could sell a couple of million bucks worth of shares and it's only $5
John (16m 59s):
We do have a limit, we've got a $250,000 limit.
Phil (17m 2s):
Still pretty good. Yeah.
John (17m 3s):
Yeah, absolutely. You could go and sell a million bucks worth of stock, but you are going to have to pay brokerage a couple of times. You know, it still works out significantly cheaper than any of our peers. So it's $5 brokerage on Aussie listed shares. It's zero brokerage when you buy Aussie listed ETFs. And the reason for that is really to reduce that barrier to entry to getting started. So we want people to make a good long-term investment decision. If we can remove that barrier to entry, that $5 brokerage fee and make it zero, we've seen that really performed well. The amount of ETFs that get bought on our platform is phenomenal. It's a fantastic feature that we've got. It is $5 when you sell.
John (17m 43s):
So we don't want people to sort of game the system and be trading back and forth, trying to clip out small gains. So it is $5 when you sell Aussie ETFs. But we've also got US shares now on the platform, it's zero brokerage for US shares. You may ask how we make money on that. We do charge a small FX fee to move money between Aussie dollars and US dollars
Phil (18m 3s):
Foreign exchange, isn't it, FX?
John (18m 5s):
Yeah, correct. Foreign exchange. So when you move your Aussie dollars to US dollars, there's a small fee that is built into that exchange. And that's 50 bips, 50 basis points that we add into the rate to cover that cost.
Phil (18m 18s):
That's about half a percent, is that right?
John (18m 20s):
Yeah. Correct.
Phil (18m 21s):
So you've also got a super product, as well, as you said at the beginning, it's Superhero. Tell us about super. It's just like any other super account that you can tell your boss that you want your money to go into this particular one.
John (18m 32s):
Yeah. So its sort of back to the future for us with super. It's where the business started, you know, I think we sort of walked straight into a bit of a minefield when it comes to superannuation. There's a lot of red tape, there's a lot of regulation. But looking back, you know, it took us three years to get the super product up and running. Looking back, we're actually very thankful for that regulation. You know, there's a lot of red tape in the space but it is there to protect people. And, you know, from a competitive point of view, it was hard. And to have someone, you know, copy us, I think would be just as hard and take just as long. But what it is, is it's a public offer super fund. So it's a retail fund. So it would be like, you know, IOOF or AMP or even one of the industry funds.
John (19m 17s):
So it's the same sort of fund in terms of structure, APRA regulated fund. We do allow you to sign up. If you've got a Superhero account, you can click add a super account. You can sign up, you put your tax file number in, it will show you all of your superannuation accounts. You can transfer them with the click of a button. You can go into my gov, your Superhero account will show up there as well, and you can transfer your super across. But the key difference between what we do and other funds is you're not just going into a managed fund. We actually allow you granular control over what you invest in. So instead of going into the balanced option and really having no visibility over what you are investing in, we give you full transparency and control over what you can invest in right down to individual Aussie shares and ETFs.
John (20m 3s):
We've got two account types. One has an auto invest feature. So you can choose a portfolio and your contributions will automatically get invested into that portfolio. Or you can have what we call the control account, and that allows you to buy individual Aussie shares and ETFs. So it's ASX 300, there's about 150 different ETFs in there. There are limits on individual shareholdings. So you can't go and put a hundred percent into Afterpay, even though that would've been a good investment over the last few years, but we do have a system in place to ensure that you do build a diversified long-term portfolio.
Phil (20m 39s):
So building a long-term diversified portfolios, tell us about some of the traps for new investors.
John (20m 44s):
Yeah. Look, everyone says, do your research before you, and it's almost a bit of a throwaway line cause people coming into this space, they don't know what that means. You know, I certainly didn't know. You know, going into the GFC, I'd started at a stockbroking firm, I had no idea about what to invest in how to invest or the steps I should take to begin researching things. And you think about all these different companies and, you know, you look at the city and there's all these logos at the top of buildings and you know, they're all big substantial companies, but are they good investments? So I think the way to identify or the way to start researching businesses is to think about what you use on a daily basis.
John (21m 25s):
And we say a lot here, you know, invest what you're invested in and some people go, "Huh? What do you mean?" But when you think about it, I've got an iPhone. So let's take Apple as an example, you look at the performance of Apple over the last few years and you're like, "Wow, that's done really well." Let's have a look at why. And that's where you start to scratch the surface. So "what are we invested in?" is a really good place to start with identifying something of interest. You know, do you wear Nike shoes? Have you ever bought a TV from Kogan? Let's have a look at Kogan. You know, have you bought a book from Booktopia? Let's have a look at that. These are listed companies, all their financials are online.
John (22m 5s):
You can download a presentation, you know, management presentation and see what they actually do, what those drivers are. So I think, you know, trying to pick the next GameStop is a sure way to lose money. You might get it right every so often, but you really do need to, research things. And the easiest way to start is to think about what you use as a product, as a service on a daily basis. And yeah, invest what you're invested in.
Phil (22m 30s):
And it's very good to do that as well and to actually buy the company. And then once you've got a bit of your own money on the line, you become very interested in its performance. And you just want to learn everything you can about it. And it's important because I think so many people just want to be given tickers on a plate. They don't want to know about the company, they don't want to do any research and I guess that's where ETFs come in.
John (22m 54s):
Yeah, absolutely. I don't want to put tickers on a plate, but you know, to give you a bit of insight into the typical portfolio that we see new investors setting up at Superhero, and when you step back and think about it, it is those companies and sectors that we are using on a daily basis, so it's the NASDAQ 100 ETF. Very popular on the platform. And you look at some of the top holdings: it's Apple, it's Tesla, it's Google, it's Microsoft, it's Amazon. Like some of those massive companies, Netflix. I mean, these are companies that we have, we certainly know them. And we may have an everyday sort of interaction with those businesses. The next one is the Asia tech giants ETF or tech tigers ETF.
John (23m 38s):
So those are things like Alibaba, JD.com. Now some of these companies have been under pressure a little bit lately. There's some regulatory changes out of China. And those are the sorts of things that you start to pick up on in the news. Once you do have some of your money on the line, you start to go, "Well, hang on what is going on with China? Because I've got exposure to it through an investment." The Vanguard Aussie shares index ETF, that's another very popular one. So that gives you exposure to the ASX 200, it is broad exposure. But our market has done very well as well. So those are the, sort of the three ETFs that people look at. And that's just data that we've pulled from our system. And then they look at individual shares as well.
John (24m 19s):
So when we look at those individual shares, it's Zip and Afterpay are two of the biggest. And you know, you walk through a shopping centre, which is difficult for most people in Australia at the moment, given the lockdown, but you walk through a shopping centre and you see Zip and Afterpay stickers on the front of pretty much every shop window. And there's millions of people in the country who use those products on a daily basis. The other one is Qantas, iconic Aussie brand, household brand. Everyone wants to go overseas again. And you know, you probably think of Qantas being that premium airline that you want to fly. So that's another one. When we look at the US it's Apple and Tesla by a long way, and those are the guys that, everyone's got an iPhone, I always say everyone who's got an Android is just waiting to get an iPhone.
Phil (25m 6s):
Thank you for that.
John (25m 7s):
You'll get there one day. And Tesla, you know, you see Elon Musk and he's like Tony Stark, he's like Iron Man, you know? So I think there's that, you know, that attraction to that sort of person and, you know, their shares have been performing very well. So that's sort of the average portfolio that we see newcomers coming in and setting up. And, you know, past performance is not an indicator of future performance, but you look over the last, you know, year, couple of years, even with the volatility that we saw through the pandemic early last year, even through the GFC, if you are really looking at long-term investing, which for some people sounds really boring, but if you look at real long-term investing and you just keep putting money in putting it away, markets always recover and they always go back.
John (25m 50s):
History has told us markets always go up. So in the short-term, you could see big spikes down. But yeah, it's fascinating to see the data that we've pulled on those new investors, looking at those sorts of portfolios. So there's some tickers on a plate for you.
Phil (26m 6s):
Just getting back to those ETFs. I think people, once they start looking into those ETFs, like you say, your Asian tech and you start seeing Alibaba and what's going on in the news, but it's also really important for diversification. But you know, an S and P 500 ETF, for example, is going to have a large weighting that's similar to a NASDAQ ETF because it's filled up with the Microsofts and the Googles and the Apples and so forth. That's one aspect to the question. The other one, of course, is the Australian top 200 companies, hugely weighted to a couple of large miners and all of the big banks. So what are your thoughts on diversification?
John (26m 42s):
Yeah. Diversification is very important. If you look at the S and P is an interesting one, because if you look at the top sort of tech stocks, they've performed really well. But if you strip them out, the market tells a bit of a different story. It's not all roses when you start looking further down the list, when you look at the broader market and that's how diversification works. So you're not taking singular specific risks on an investment. You're taking broad exposure risk to the entire economy, really. And you know, if you look at Australia, our economy is growing, you know, probably not the last quarter, but overall, you know, you're seeing very strong growth. And at the moment with the sort of the struggles that we're seeing with lockdowns and things, the overall market is performing well because it is being bolstered by the big banks, it is being bolstered by some of the mining companies that have seen record iron ore prices and things, and that they're able to pay big dividends.
John (27m 34s):
So it is that diversification that protects you. It's the diversification that gives you exposure to multiple sectors. And when you have one sector performing really badly, you've got other sectors that are performing really well. So your overall performance can go very well, but you've got pockets that won't perform well. If you took in individual exposure, you may be in one of those pockets that perform badly. And then you've got no upside or no protection to the rest of the market. So diversification really is key. When you're looking at ETFs, you know, that does give you diversification. It gives you that whole bucket of different investments all in one security. You know, at times it can limit your upside.
John (28m 14s):
And I think Warren Buffet said they're boring, but they always perform well. Always is a risky thing to say in finance but yeah, in the long term, they do perform well. And you look at like the NASDAQ 100 ETF, you know, it's boring, it's not exciting as if you invested in GameStop or that new IPO here, what was it? Conoco, that's gone up 1200% in a couple of weeks. You know, you don't get that in an ETF, but NASDAQ 100 has done about 50% in the last 12 months. And that is an unbelievable return. And it's from a broad diversified ETF. So there is performance to be made in ETFs, but it also limits your downside.
John (28m 55s):
It gives you that diversification, so you don't have specific risk in your portfolio.
Phil (28m 60s):
John Winters, thanks very much for joining me today.
John (29m 3s):
Great to be here, Phil, thanks.
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