(TLDR: NSX mobile online trading is now available on Marketech Focus, on your HIN, at the lowest brokerage rates in Australia, and you should support the NSX if you love Australia.)

A little further to the west of Sydney than many people would dare to tread, there is a place called ‘Western Australia’. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

There is iron ore to the north and wine grapes to the south but not much else. It boasts some sort of science-defying immunity to Covid (probably from the Bali water) and more jobs than we could ever fill.

It’s a little known (or respected) paradise, where you can afford to live 10 minutes from the CBD on a starter wage in a reasonable sized house with a yard. Yeah, traffic can still be annoying in peak hour, as it can take 15 minutes to get home instead of the usual 10.

The only real downside is that the beaches are almost too perfect, and then there is our 2-week winter that currently requires a light sweater. And we don’t have no ‘Real Housewives of Perth’, which is very .

But it seems everyone wants to live in Sydney. Or Melbourne.

So, their house prices are much higher than Perth. And because of the higher costs of living, wages have to go up. So then it costs more to get your groceries. More to get a meal. More to go places.

A lot of it comes from Economics 101. Supply and demand. We still have large tracts of land for housing, so we don’t get the same shortages. But we don’t yet have the ‘culture’, as the best shows go to the biggest East Coast venues, and you can have multiple entertainment districts as you have a lot more people to frequent them all.

So there is a lot that is good in a popular city. It might take a bit of time for the population to grow to push up property values, but getting in early might give you some speculative gains.

But, what about Kings Cross you ask? Initially, a few years ago now, it seemed to be cleaning up its act for greater things, more of a family environment, less “chk-chk boom”. Then it got a bit too popular? A bit too rowdy? A victim of its own success? And new controls were brought in, a bit too heavy handed. And the thing that was literally designed to be one thing – an entertainment precinct – was no longer entertaining.

A brief history of…stonks

Stock markets aren’t too dissimilar, and have been around for a very long time. They are not just for making memes about your trading losses, they are designed at their core to assist in the creation and growth of a country’s businesses.

But they can also become a dangerous place, and protecting people from themselves can sometimes go too far the other way.

They have a set of rules that you need to meet in order to list upon them, and then the ‘market’ decides on the value of that business – so that you can issue new shares when you need capital. And maybe, just maybe, it’s a bit too hard to list on our biggest one these days.

Everyone knows the ASX. It’s probably been around since Captain Cook had that idea for a South Pacific travel and boating company.

He would have raised a bit of money from his mates (first mate, second mate) and close family (his British family, his Hawaiian family, the NZ one, the Australian one) to give him a bit of seed capital and split it up into shares depending on how much they put in.

He would have had to put a few reputable Board members on, drawn up a business plan to show to investors – so he could raise money from those investors – then presented the whole lot to the stock exchange at the time, which was probably called the ‘Van Diemen/ New Holland Stock Depository and Trading Co.’ or the like.

So the market maker at the VDNHSDT (Co.) would then yell out at the rabble to ask for a bid for the shares like a ye olde auction (because this is set in the past), and then old Aunt Cook might decide to flog a few at that price (maybe to buy some anti-scurvy pills).

Then a few more buyers would line up and a few more sellers, and the VDNHSDT (Co.) would take a clip on each trade to cover the cost of chalk. And a market, with liquidity, would be created.

Lets skip forward – a lot – as that was getting tiring…

One market to rule them all

The ASX is now the primary board. I love it as it allowed me to take the thing that I loved doing and turn it into a profession. I have made a goodly amount of money speculating on the directions of the companies that exist on it.

But, it does have a bit of a monopoly and is itself listed (on itself) and has shareholders that demand a high return for their investment.

To list on the ASX you need to meet their listing rules. But…even if you do, they can still reserve the right not to let you list, often probably because it’s too early in your development.

There have been a few too many ‘Chk-Chk Booms’ at the small end of town so to a certain extent they need to ‘pick stocks’ that might not give them more headaches than they are worth.

And nowadays the cost for listing on the ASX is quite a large amount of money. Professional Board member fees and legal fees and ASIC fees and broker fees and share registry fees aaaaannnndddd….annual listing fees. Then they sell us back the price and news data you’ll need to trade on it.

So, its expensive for an early stages company – that needs capital – to get access to it through the ASX market, and its comparatively expensive on a global basis to trade on.

The alternative for a small player is to get venture capital (often in exchange for loss of control of your company), from a Venture Capital/ Start-up funder.

First up, you’ll probably need to be a founder of that company as everyone loves a feel good ‘founder story’, and it doesn’t hurt if you are cool or hip. Best to have bootstrapped it from your mum’s garage, that’s also a great story they can sell to their investors! Definitely don’t be from Perth if you can choose where you are born, and preferably…make sure you went to school at one of the prestigious Sydney or Melbourne schools. With a VC as a classmate.

If you want to guarantee VC support, you’ll need to be a ‘disrupter’ have a ‘wow, that’s so now’ name that is totally meaningless and your plans should include ‘making the world a better place’ and to become a ‘unicorn’.

Like the guys in this clip, from the chillingly accurate ‘Silicon Valley’ TV series.

Enough bagging on the VC’s, I’m sure that Laurie Bream is only a parody!

So, the VC’s are hard to get into, crowdfunding is still an option, but then what? The ASX is hard to get onto, so then you own shares in a stock that you can’t sell that are worth an indeterminable value and you still need more capital.

Someone should build a secondary exchange like the NASDAQ in Australia to support earlier stage companies and tech plays. Well guess what…

Welcome to the NSX

Yes, that’s right, there already is one, and it’s called the National Stock Exchange!

Like much Sydney property, the ASX market averages are currently trading at the highest levels ever. This is a case of ‘more buyers than sellers’ with the hundreds of thousands of new traders with easy access forcing prices up and up, but it also makes it harder to find a bargain.

Perth, on the other hand, is cheap.

So, maybe, the fact that the NSX companies have not had an online access point for trading, maybe there are some stocks that are worthy of your consideration as maybe the retail army could be interested in a few currently unloved stocks once online trading is accessible? Who knows, not me certainly…

Here’s one I picked randomly for no particular reason. Lookit dat ASS! You know the meme-stock guys are going to love this one!

Asset Resolution Ltd. NSX ticker: ASS

So what’s the deal. Why isn’t there access through any of the other online trading platforms?

(Bangs fist on table)…Well let me tell you sonny Jim!!! That is because every single other broker that deals in Australian shares makes their profit on the brokerage, and therefore will only offer ‘things’ that currently trade more than enough for them to justify the spend on connecting it.

Yes, to the best of my knowledge – and I’m happy to be proven wrong — but Marketech Focus is the only true, fee for service, non-conflicted broker in Australia. So we connect services because we can! We want to make our platform better and better, not look for novel new ways to make you trade more and more or save a buck on the data or give you dud holding structures.

We’re also a small company. And a technology company. And we’re from Perth! So we have suffered the holy trinity of discrimination from alternative sources of funding, and want our brothers at the small company-building end of town to have access to capital and a liquid market to make sure Australia can actually build the next…well, not another BNPL, but maybe the next Fortescue, instead of seeing the Atlassians and the Canvas leave Australia to get support.

So, come and check us out early, and guide us to the features you want from your trading platform. We’ll build them for you! And whilst you’re there, check out all the NSX companies before the hordes arrive — knowing that more volume means more companies will list and more great companies can grow.

We even have a free 6 month introductory NSX-only no-subscription special package (as we want to do our bit) with $5 or 0.02% brokerage rate – or upgrade to ASX and NSX for $45 per month and have access to both the main board and Australia’s NASDAQ, and do your bit to help keep Australian ingenuity on our shores, and on our exchanges!

At Marketech our platform is about technology, providing you the tools and technology to trade.  We encourage our high-function trading platform to get you live pricing, live charts, live market depth to ensure you have the tools and trading capability at your fingertips, and on your mobile phone or PC.

You trade your own stock on your individual HIN. It is your cash in your own Macquarie account where you keep the competitive interest you earn.

Our subscribers get access to brokerage starting at $5, and then 0.02 per cent for trades over $25k.  If you want to trade the market you need immediate access wherever you are and the seamless Marketech mobile app means you are live anywhere anytime.

For more information, visit www.marketech.com.au. Any queries regarding Marketech should be directed to Marketech and not to Stockhead.

This article was developed in collaboration with Marketech Stockbroking Pty Ltd (AFSL 486148), a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing. This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.