What if buying and selling shares, or currency was like a game? What if the profits appeared instantly online? What if you just had to click, ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ based on graphs of how the shares were moving?
It is little wonder that the largest stock market quoted gaming company in the US owns a financial trading brokerage. Why is this important? Because people are scared by investing, trading. They need it to be user friendly.
If you can get the public to use iPads and download apps and play on Facebook things like Candy Crush, then you can certainly teach them the stock market.
It’s why I created a platform making it that simple; http://inter.tradermind.com – if your grandmother can find channel Star Plus on Sky, then trading has to be equally easy.
It has to be that you can see your balance instantly. It has to be you click ‘buy’ and you can see the price move up and down immediately. It has to be you can put as little as nothing in your account and practice for free and feel comfortable. It has to be if you put in £500 via your credit or debit card, the broker also puts in £500 because you are finding your way.
All these things are vital otherwise we will never have people doing something more valuable than playing games and wasting their time, when they could be learning a new skill. And what about losing?
The key is to practice first. Buy some HSBC or Marks and Spencer at the click of one button. See how you get on before putting in real money.
Like games, these stock market sites now let you trade with just a few pounds. But how do you know what to buy and sell?
Most people, like with playing online games, find strategies or have view eg ‘I love the service at Barclays, I think I may buy some’ or ‘ I notice the share price of Berkeley Homes keeps going up, or of Apple, I think that will last at least another week or month, I’ll buy some.’
The thing that stops most people learning new important skills is the unknown. Or the feeling something is not for them. Well since you can invest in a demo account, the stock market is for everyone because you can do it without risking any money.
And since you can do these things on an smartphone, or tablet or computer, it means you can be doing other things too at the same time, than just checking up on Facebook or playing Game of Thrones.
So learn a new skill now.
Alpesh Patel
