likewise, I'm building a social-network-y site for retail investors (https://www.holfolio.com) to track and share what they and others are investing in.
One of the main points is you can see the history of what someone has invested in and get a picture of their whole portfolio. Some people currently post their trades on traditional social media but its really hard to keep track of, these fleets are only going to make it worse (helping me in the process?)
I'm also very sceptical of that 10 million customers line.
Do you think its just people that have opened an account with them at any point? I bet the DAU (a reasonable metric for someones main bank, especially in today's cashless society) is a very small percentage of that.
I'm one of those "customers". I tried using connecting to my old account to check out the app after 4 years but I was asked for ID verification, which for some reason failed, in order to be able to do anything. I can't close my account since there's a 20 eurocent balance on it, so it probably still counts as a "customer" account even though I can't use it in any way.
> a reasonable metric for someones main bank, especially in today's cashless society
In Europe, the primary region for Revolut at the moment, cashlessness is highly variable. In a country like the UK or The Netherlands, DAU might be a reasonable measure but in say Germany, which is largely still cash-based, it's less relevant.
I'd say MAU or something like that makes more sense for a predominantly European financial service (Revolut is not a bank, it does not offer bank accounts).
I'm less skeptical that they have a high number of active users, but probably not a high number of users that use this "bank" like a real bank.
I use another "neobank" called Simple in the US. It is not a primary account. It is how I divvy up allowance to my wife and I for our weekly fun money ($70/person/week). Can be spent on anything we want, but once it's gone its gone. I use mine for lunches, she packs a lunch and uses hers for shopping. We both save a certain percentage of that to pay for vacations.
Our typical average monthly balance is in the low 3 figures. Like currently I have $110 in savings and $45 in checking. I have no clue about how much my wife has, and that is the beauty of it.
I'm with Monzo in the UK and use it similarly, Twice a month or so, £100 goes in there to pay for things like dining out and the occasional grocery shop. It's a nice way of separating the dailies from the monthlies. It means my Old Fashioned Bank's statement is readable.
I just use it when abroad (my high street bank FX is terrible) so I might be one of those casual customers. The crypto and "premium" features don't interest me in the slightest.
I might be just outside the millennial target market though.
Reading the post makes me most curious about how you live so cheaply? Halfing your burn rate doubles your time to death which more than doubles your chances of success
>Reading the post makes me most curious about how you live so cheaply?
90% of it is just location.
When I was in Manhattan, I was spending ~$7k/month. Part of that was higher cost of my apartment and health insurance, but another big part is just the culture. In NYC, it wouldn't be unusual for me to go out to a $80/person dinner, spend $25 on drinks afterwards, another $25 on Ubers, then another $20 on brunch in the morning.
In Western Mass, I do make efforts to live cheaply, but so much of it is just the ease of not spending money when nobody in your social circle spends like that.
Alpha is the degree to which an investment outperforms "the market", where "the market" can be any benchmark you want to use. So yes, by definition, alpha is zero-sum in that not everyone can beat the benchmark, in the same way that not everyone can be above average.
But this tautology isn't particularly meaningful, because most people don't care about beating "the market"; they care about their financial health and solvency, and in many cases, slightly under-performing "the market" can still be perfectly acceptable for a lot of investors if the market is performing well enough and they've met their own expected targets.
(This is, in fact, the principle behind index funds: index funds will never beat the market, and are guaranteed to underperform the market after fees are taken into account, but yet many people still put their money in index funds).
One of the main points is you can see the history of what someone has invested in and get a picture of their whole portfolio. Some people currently post their trades on traditional social media but its really hard to keep track of, these fleets are only going to make it worse (helping me in the process?)