At Berkshire Hathaway’s (NYSE: BRK.B) (NYSE: BRK.A) annual meeting, Warren Buffett took a not-so-veiled swipe at Robinhood, basically likening it and its customers to casinos and degenerate gamblers.
Buffett told investors that Robinhood has “become a very significant part of the casino aspect, the casino group, that has joined the stock market in the last year or year and a half.”
There is some truth to that.
A lot of investors these days — particularly younger investors with limited income — absolutely play the stock market in a similar way one would play the slots in Vegas.
But isn’t investing pretty much gambling, anyway?
Sure, you can do research and analysis on any public company and try to figure out whether or not it’s a good bet. Certainly that’s an advantage over blind gambling, which is solely about luck.
But when folks are investing $100 or $500, it’s unlikely they’re going to spend hours, days, or weeks investigating a particular stock. Just the time it would take to do all the necessary research would likely be the equivalent to an opportunity cost that well exceeds that $100 or $500 investment.
In other words, who has the time or resources to do the kind of research guys like Warren Buffett pay analysts millions of dollars to do on a regular basis?
Truth is, I’m kind of tired of all these old, super-rich investors acting as if their way is the ONLY way to create wealth anyway.
I certainly don’t have 1% of the investment pedigree Warren Buffett has, but I’ve still been able to help investors pull in dozens of triple- and quadruple-digit gains over the years by investing in things Buffett wouldn’t touch when we did.
This was particularly true in the cannabis space when I recommended that investors buy shares of Canopy Growth Corporation (TSX: WEED), Aphria (TSX: APHA), and OrganiGram (TSX-V: OGI) back when they were just penny stocks.
Members of my Green Chip Stocks investment community locked in gains in excess of 1,000% on each of those — including more than 3,000% with Canopy Growth.
So while I’ve certainly taken advice from the Oracle of Omaha over the years, I’ve also been very conscious of the fact that there’s more than one way to make a buck. And it doesn’t always have to be “Warren’s way.”
Not Everyone Is Born Into Wealth
The reason Robinhood has done so well is because the company caters primarily to the “non-rich,” less sophisticated investor.
We’re talking about the kind of investor who’s attracted to things like no trading fees and platforms that essentially make investing look like playing a video game. Not really my cup of tea, but certainly a smart idea that has resulted in millions of millennials and Gen Zers actually showing some interest in investing.
That’s not a bad thing.
But Warren Buffett comes from a different world and a different time, back when you had to have some degree of finance education and, of course, a very nice chunk of change to actually build some wealth.
That world, while still relevant, is not applicable to most of today’s younger investors. Thus the reason a company like Robinhood is doing so well.
Of course, I’m not here to praise Robinhood either. After all, the company quickly gave the proverbial middle finger to the “regular investor” when GameStop was being manipulated by opportunistic Reddit users.
The big money that backs Robinhood didn’t like being played by those inexperienced instigators on Reddit, and Robinhood management quickly decided that “the little guy” couldn’t screw them over as badly as the hedge funds that have far more strings to pull.
Still, the idea of making investing more attractive and more tangible to inexperienced investors is a cat that’s never going back into the bag. And I love it.
Why shouldn’t investing become more democratized so that it’s not just rich folks who get to wet their beaks?
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You know, when I first got into this line of work, I learned rather quickly that the old guard, high-net-worth investors who ran traditional funds and investment banks weren’t particularly fond of the newsletter business.
They saw it as “beneath them.”
Or maybe not worth their time.
And maybe there’s some truth to that.
But I’ll tell you this much…
It’s definitely been worth the time of those “regular investors” who have literally made millions of dollars by following the advice I’ve personally given in my newsletter.
Not everyone is born into wealth.
Not everyone is gifted a million-dollar trust fund at 18 years old.
Not everyone has the Ivy League connections that can get them “a seat at the table.”
But doesn’t everyone have the right to create wealth and prosperity? Not just those who were gifted wealth and privilege from day one?
You know, one of the reasons I actually got into this business is because I want to help regular investors create wealth.
I want to provide the same kind of research and analysis that guys like Warren Buffett pay small fortunes to access.
I take great pride in knowing that members of my Green Chip Stocks community have been able to experience 10x, 20x, and even 30x returns on their investments.
The kinds of returns that have long been solely the dominion of the folks who are already stinking rich.
Bottom line: There is honor in democratizing investing.
And that’s why, every single day, I’m knee-deep in analysis, looking for the next big payday for my readers — regardless of whether they have $100 or $100,000 to invest.
And right now that’s the psychedelic medicine industry, where we’ve already seen gains in excess of 1,000% on our first psychedelic medicine investment.
It’s worth noting that there are five more psychedelic medicine stocks in my portfolio right now — all on the verge of delivering our next triple-digit or even quadruple-digit gain.
You can learn more about it here.
The truth is Warren Buffett is a brilliant investor. But you don’t have to be in Warren Buffett’s inner circle to make a lot of money. You just need access to the right intel and the right networks — two things I’ve been providing for members of my Green Chip Stocks community for more than a decade.
And if you’d like to get some of this action for yourself too, click here now.
To a new way of life and a new generation of wealth…
Jeff Siegel
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Jeff is the founder and managing editor of Green Chip Stocks. For more on Jeff, go to his editor’s page.
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