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Experts
MoneyTalks is Stockhead’s regular drill down into what stocks investors are looking at right now. We’ll tap our extensive list of experts to hear what’s hot, their top picks, and what they’re looking out for.
Today we hear from online trading platform Selfwealth’s CEO, Cath Whitaker.
The Federal Budget often creates tailwinds for the economy and stock market as the government splashes its cash.
But Whitaker reckons this year’s Budget has been an unusual and lacklustre one, and has missed out on the opportunity to make some crucial fundamental changes.
“There’s still the very hefty reliance on mining in the Australian economy, and we know what’s happening with commodity prices right now,” Whitaker told Stockhead.
“My preference is that we should have put more emphasis and structural changes in our tech industry.”
While the government did announce some big funding into cyber tech, Whitaker thinks it was more of a defence mechanism rather than an attempt to build up our skill sets.
“I would have wanted to see money pumped into tech startups or specific education programs to upskill ourselves. And frankly, be more open in terms of attracting the tech talent that we need,” she added.
According to Whitaker, the Fed Budget also came up short on climate change. While fossil fuel received a big subsidy to ease our bowser pain, there was nothing for electric vehicles.
“And as we know, there are real natural disasters happening right across Australia. But there was really no funding associated with that in the Budget,” Whitaker said.
“Instead, the focus is on infrastructure projects.”
“Yes we’d all like a train line from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast, but in the big scheme of things, is that really where the focus should be especially with such huge revenues being generated from mining?” she added.
Whitaker believes 2022 will bring a mixture of results in the stock market.
With higher rates looming, Whitaker says that investors are beginning to shift their portfolio in terms of the type of stocks being bought.
“We can see through the Selfwealth platform that people are purchasing more into diversified ETFs,” Whitaker revealed.
“We can also see more buying into lithium related stocks.”
For those bullish on tech stocks, the market sentiment has unfortunately changed dramatically over the past three months.
“We’re now seeing more negative sentiment towards these growth stocks as inflation kicks in,” she said.
Whitaker also believes we’re already seeing the knock-on effect of inflation through higher wages, which in turn will impact the corporate sector’s bottom line this year.
“I believe the focus in 2022 will be much more of an industry focus, and understanding how some of those factors can impact the bottom line.”
Top 5 ASX stocks traded on the Selfwealth platform:
1. VANGUARD MSCI INDEX INTERNATIONAL SHARES ETF
2. VANGUARD DIVERSIFIED HIGH GROWTH INDEX ETF
3. Core Lithium (ASX:CXO)
4. VANGUARD AUSTRALIAN SHARES INDEX
5. Lake Resources (ASX:LKE)
Starting in March 2022, Aussie investors are able to invest in Hong Kong listed stocks on the Selfwealth platform.
Whitaker is seeing a lot of early interest in Chinese tech stocks from investors.
“Six of the top 10 tech companies in the world are based in China, and the Hong Kong stock market provides access to trade those stocks,” Whitaker said.
“This massive interest in Chinese stocks also reflects Australia’s demographics, with many having Chinese or Hong Kong heritage,” she added.
Top 5 Hong Kong listed stocks traded on the Selfwealth platform:
1. TenCent
2. Alibaba
3. Xiaomi Corp
4. Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical
5. Shengli Oil and Gas Pipe Holdings Ltd
Top 5 US listed stocks traded on the Selfwealth platform:
1. Tesla
2. SQQQ: ProShares UltraPro Short
3. Alibaba
4. Apple
5. NVIDIA Corp
Selfwealth will also start offering crypto trading starting from the second quarter of 2022.
The company has parterned with local crypto exchange BTC Markets, allowing Selfwealth’s 117,000 customers to trade crypto directly on the Selflwealth platform.
It will be the first online share trading platform to offer crypto trading services in Australia.
“Our crypto offering is not meant for day traders. It is for people who want to have 10% to 15% of their portfolios in cryptos,” Whitaker explained.
From that perspective, Selfwealth has been thoughtful in terms of which cryptocurrencies it will be providing.
“We’ll be offering less than 10 cryptos on our platform. And just like stocks, our approach would be to educate our customers to make sure they understand what they are buying,” she said.
Selfwealth (ASX:SWF) is currently the fourth biggest broker in Australia, with only CommSec, NABTrade and ANZ Share Investing in front.
The platform has overtaken Westpac Share Trading, and has a goal to hit the top 3 spot over the next year or so.
“We know what we need to do to get to number 3, and that’s not too far away,” said Whitaker.
“Then we’re going to go for number 2, but there is a big gap between number 2 and the incumbent number 1 which is CommSec.”
But Whitaker said many of Selfwealth’s new customers have come from CommSec.
“They come to us because of the simplicity of our platform, and we provide a lot of independent content,” she said,
For the last half year results, Selfwealth revenue was up 18% (on pcp) to just below $10m.
Active traders on the platform also increased significantly in the half, up by 75% on pcp to more than 117,000 users.
The views, information, or opinions expressed in the interview in this article are solely those of the interviewee and do not represent the views of Stockhead.
Stockhead has not provided, endorsed or otherwise assumed responsibility for any financial product advice contained in this article.
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