Showing us how
If there’s been one big shift in global investment markets over the past two years, it’s the legion of small punters who are sticking it to the man, and doin’ it for themselves. Think of the “meme” traders of 2021 who blew up at least one hedge fund manager by frenziedly pumping up US games retailer Gamestop last year.
The desire to crush the big guy on Wall Street isn’t the main reason for Pretoria musician Betsie Schaap’s interest in the market. But her success in stockbroker David Shapiro’s Cristal stock challenge last year — she won with a 120% return, beating a legion of professional fund managers — is an inspirational tale for other small-time pundits keen to take charge of their own investments. Shapiro, who is running the challenge again this year, and to a much wider field, invited punters to pick five shares at the start of 2021. Schaap’s winning picks were PPC, Purple Group, Renergen, Santova and Balwin.
The full-time accompanist and organist is 52 and only started buying shares with any real intent four years ago. Her father, a doctor, was a dedicated investor “who was constantly telling us we should start investing, but it never sort of happened”, she says.
The problem is that she never had the kind of spare money she thought she’d need to start a portfolio.
The costs of getting started were high, she says, “so I was put off the whole thing. There were no platforms cheap enough for me to afford.”
Schaap’s father had his money with BoE, initially called Board of Executors. You can just imagine the clubby whiff of cigar smoke and the hushed tones of important men it gave off.
But it was a very millennial investment frenzy, bitcoin, that got Schaap itching to get involved again.
“It was late December 2017 and I googled ‘What is the cheapest way to invest on the JSE?’ — and EasyEquities popped up. So I registered and told my dad about it and he thought I was going to make a big mistake. But I said to him: ‘This is the only platform I will be able to use.’”
It was EasyEquities’s ad, telling would-be investors that if they liked
Pick n Pay they could buy a part of a share for as little as R10, that got her going. She started off with a demo account and then thought: “I’m good at this.” Asked what shares she began buying, Schaap refers to the Afrikaans phrase “Jy moet kyk waar’s al die voete.” In other words, see where the feet are going. In those days it was Mr Price, Shoprite and cellphone companies. “Everyone’s walking around with a cellphone, so MTN, that kind of thing,” she tells the FM. But Schaap was keen to also own US-listed shares, like Apple or Amazon.
“EasyEquities started an option to invest in US dollars. My dollar demo account did extremely well and I wanted to buy Amazon,” says Schaap. At that stage, US shares weren’t available on the Easy platform, so she went to Standard Bank, one of the most established online share trading platforms in SA. But using the small amounts she was accustomed to on EasyEquities, which has made its name by offering fractional ownership of listed stocks, wasn’t an option.
“I got the impression that Standard Bank would punish me for wanting to save and I was furious,” she says.
Then Satrix launched a Nasdaq exchange traded fund (ETF), which became available on the EasyEquities platform. Schaap was invited to its launch at the JSE, and recalls that she “jumped on the Gautrain and went to the JSE. I was a guest there and I met [Purple Group CEO] Charles Savage and I bought my first shares there and then.”
Purple started the EasyEquities platform after it (Purple) was almost sunk by the implosion of the newly launched European arm of its Global Trader venture, in 2008. It has long argued for the “democratisation” of stock markets by slashing brokerage fees and giving investors the option to buy increments of a share.
It’s clearly working: EasyEquities now has 1.34-million registered users and roughly 700,000 active accounts. Revenue surged 79% in the year to endAugust, to R172m. It has attracted sector stalwarts including Sanlam, which took a 30% stake in EasyEquities in 2017.
Purple also hooks its customers by offering zero brokerage fees if they own certain shares — like Purple, until recently. So Schaap bought, at 35c a pop. (The stock is now north of R3.) The shares “just moved sideways for a very long time but suddenly [Purple] got more and more attention, and more people started investing in EasyEquities. There are so many more options [now], including all these ETFs, and it makes it really easy. I opened an account for my daughters and my husband and every month I try to buy more. I have to learn a lot but that’s my investing journey.”
While Schaap bemoans the fact that she has left it late in life, her returns are a graphic demonstration that small amounts do add up. She started with R10,000 and has, since 2018, ploughed R195,000 into a portfolio of shares and ETFs. Her portfolio has grown in value to R313,000, a return of 60% over four years. Not bad for a novice.
Schaap feels strongly that schools should be doing more to get children interested in saving at a young age.
“You don’t have to earn thousands to become an investor, but there’s so much education to do regarding investing. These days everybody has a cellphone, there’s free Wi-Fi. There’s really no excuse not to invest.”
It was late December 2017 and I googled ‘What is the cheapest way to invest on the JSE ?’— and EasyEquities popped up