What Have Investors Been Focused On? Insights From the InvestmentMarkets Platform

Hi, I'm Darren Connolly, CEO at Investment Markets.

Investment Markets was set up to empower self-directed investors to search, find, compare, and then select the right investment opportunity for them.

We provide an easily accessible free platform where you can find more than 400 investment opportunities across 20 different asset classes.

alongside regular high quality educational content available in a variety of easily accessible formats.

We intend to continue adding investment opportunities from a wide variety of fund managers and product issuers to the platform and continue to make our content as accessible, interesting and relevant to you as possible.

We believe that every Australian should have the opportunity to look after their own investments, if they so choose.

No one should ever be at a disadvantage because they don't want or cannot afford to use a professional advisor.

Now, that's not to say we are anti-advisor.

On the contrary, every investor is likely to require and benefit from professional advice at some point in their life.

But the traditional advice model does have some limitations, and we believe that the most important investment any investor can make is in themselves.

We are four self-directed investors, four of those who have chosen to take control of their financial future, those who research opportunities, make their own decisions, and yes, also carry the responsibility for the outcomes.

That level of independence can be empowering, but it also demands a high level of discipline and knowledge, which is why educating yourself is the most valuable investment you will ever make.

Managing your own wealth means you are effectively acting as your own personal CIO who has some serious skin in the game.

At every decision, from how, when, and where to invest, through to product selection, risk management, it all matters.

Understanding how markets function, therefore, how products are structured, what drives returns, risk is essential.

It helps you distinguish between short-term noise and long-term opportunity.

and safeguards against costly mistakes driven by emotion, hype, misinformation or the hard sell.

With education, you can better filter information critically, identify your own biases and focus on long-term portfolio growth driven by the power of compounding.

Ultimately, patience and time is what drives wealth creation.

Part of educating yourself is also to understand market trends, not to necessarily follow the herd, but to better understand it, to gain insight into broader investor behavior.

Today, I have some insights from some 300,000 unique views of the 400 various products on the investment markets platform over the last 12 months.

Now what people look at or investigate does not necessarily correlate to an investment that's made, but the dwell time in these pages is one minute and 25 seconds, which can be an eternity online.

So it does correlate to an individual showing sufficient interest to dig a little deeper into the material and the documentation that is available on each page.

Now, before I start, I would like to show you what one of these pages typically looks like.

As you can see, the page contains all the information that the prospective investor may need to make an investment, including the ability to compare performance and fee data where it is available.

The information includes the PDS, the TMD, product flyers, information on the management team, or the information memorandum if it is a wholesale product.

Once the information has been digested, any interested investor can then contact the product issuer directly.

And to clarify, this is all free for the prospective investor.

There is no hard sell.

Product issuers pay us to list on the platform produce educational material, but there is no pressure on users.

They make their own decisions on their own timeframes and of their own volition.

The next slide shows the interest or views of the products in the top 10 asset classes in the 12 months to the end of October.

Of the top five categories, four are income focused, property funds, mortgage funds, diversified income funds, and private credit.

This is probably not a huge surprise given the average age of a high net worth investor is over 65.

That's probably two thirds of the user audience.

And income has always historically been a key focus for this cohort.

About one third of the total interest is in just property funds and mortgage funds, potentially reflecting Australia's love affair with property, irrespective of whether or not it's on the debt or the equity side of the investment.

A falling interest rate environment helped the commercial property sector earlier this year after a few tough years beforehand, but we will have to see if recent inflationary pressures and questions around whether or not there are any further rate reductions in the RBA kit bag will have an impact going forward.

The third and fourth place categories, diversified income funds and private credit respectively, are neck on neck in the statistics.

Interest in both categories has gotten progressively stronger month on month over the last 12 months.

Now, unfortunately, I don't have data over a longer timeframe, but I think, notably, I can't help but feel the private credit is on a stronger upward trajectory.

And as long as there are no major defaults, redemption freezes or similar issues over the next 12 months is probably likely to continue on that trajectory.

More traditional equity funds then fill fifth, sixth, and seventh places.

Global funds have a slow start to the 12 months before bouncing back strongly post-tariff announcements.

Then faltering a little recently, perhaps as valuation issues come to the fore in the US.

Small caps started the period slowly before going on a relatively strong run afterwards, even surpassing global funds in August and September before stabilizing somewhat in October.

Again, a halt in interest rate reductions or a possible halt in reductions may already be having an impact on investor interest.

It's the tale of two reporting windows for large cap funds focused on Aussie equities.

Interest dropped strongly in February, bounced back after mid-year reporting season before losing momentum again in the full year reporting season in August and roaring back ahead again in September.

ETFs, bond funds, and property development funds have then been captured from 8th through the 10th.

ETF interest has been consistent in the last few months, while both bond funds and development funds were much more popular at the start of the 12 months.

Finally, Other, which as its name suggests, reflects 10 other categories, all of which have less than two and a half percent of interest.

It seems that crypto, commodities, hedge funds, private equity, licks, venture capital, and even multi-asset portfolios are of interest for only a few hardcore investors.

I hope you have found this little insight into what self-directed investors are looking at on the investment markets platform interesting.

Irrespective of what others are looking at, I would like to re-emphasize four things that every investor should be doing.

One, invest in yourself, your knowledge and ability to understand what you are investing in, to ask the right questions, to know the impact of your choices that is bedrock for success.

Sign up to newsletters, listen to podcasts, follow commentators, take courses, whatever works for you.

But never stop investing in building your own knowledge.

Two.

Research, research, research.

Before doing anything, do your homework.

Check out the asset class, the manager, the products, the peer set.

How do they compare to other similar funds?

Why would you pick one over another?

Is it an outlier?

Why?

Remember it's your money and the harsh truth is no one else will care if it's not invested wisely.

Three, take your time.

Never invest because someone is putting pressure on you or telling you that you will miss out.

If this is the case, step back and think very carefully about why.

Never, ever invest in a hurry.

Four, get advice.

If you're unsure of what to do, if it's a big decision with lifetime ramifications, get advice from a professional advisor.

Now that advice may simply validate what you know or are thinking, or it may be much, much more impactful.

Irrespective, sometimes just sleeping more peacefully at night will make it all worthwhile.