Can social network for savings & investment be successful? Nordnet says “yes”
Shareville, Nordnet’s social network which allows the bank’s clients to get inspiration from successful investors, now has 200,000 members.
Building a social network for investors can be a rather challenging task, but Nordnet seems to be handling this matter quite well. Today, the bank announced that the number of members of Shareville, its social network for savings and investments, has reached 200,000.
“Shareville has had a fantastic development since we launched the feature in 2014. The number of influencers on the platform is now 200,000 and has increased by 30 percent only in the last year. Social media and savings are a great combination, and at Shareville, members can easily share investment ideas with each other”, says Martin Ringberg, Country Manager for Nordnet in Sweden.
As one can see, the network has been out there for a while in order to gather such a number of users. Moreover, we should note the fact that one can use the network free of charge, as long as one has an account with Nordnet.
Although the users have access only to limited data of your portfolio (for instance, they have no idea how much money you have in your account), it is recommended that users remain anonymous – that is, one is advised to use a pseudonym.
The idea of Shareville is to allow Nordnet clients to share their savings & investment ideas, to discuss with others and to follow influencers.
For Shareville accounts, a rating system of 0-3 stars is used. The system assesses risk-adjusted returns. Anyone who has a positive return gets awarded one star. The second star is awarded to those who perform better than half of the members who have a positive return. The third star is awarded when the portfolio belongs to the 10% with the highest share of those with a positive return. For the latter group, Nordnet has even developed a special Shareville index.
In the meantime, Forex brokers appear to be cautious when it comes to social trading networks. eToro remains one of the handful of examples of brokers willing to maintain a social trading network. Online trading majors like IG Group and Swissquote have taken a more moderate approach of building online communities where traders can discuss and share their views on trading and the latest market developments.
