Twitter Partners With eToro To Offer Research & Investment Trading Facility – Forbes Advisor INDIA
Twitter is partnering with online trading platform eToro to provide users of the microblogging site with real-time information about stocks and shares, cryptocurrencies, commodities, and other investments such as exchange-traded funds.
They will also be able to click through to the eToro site from Twitter to make trades.
Millions of private individuals worldwide already use online platforms to run personal investment portfolios.
But this development, announced on April 13, 2023, is thought to mark the first tie-up between a widely used social media platform and a service that facilitates the purchase of financial securities.
Speaking recently at a conference, Musk said he wanted Twitter to become “the biggest financial institution in the world” – part of his strategy to make the platform the “app-of-all-things”.
The latest move with eToro expands on the microblogging network’s “$Cashtag” feature, which provides financial information about a limited number of stocks and crypto assets through TradingView data.
A $Cashtag is a stock market ticker symbol preceded by a dollar sign. For example, the $Cashtag for Tesla, the electric vehicle where Musk is chief executive officer, is $TSLA.
Typing a $Cashtag into their Twitter feed, users can view real-time information about the financial performance of a particular stock or security.
Twitter introduced pricing data for $Cashtags at the end of last year. Since then, the company says the feature has experienced widespread adoption, racking up more than 420 million searches for the term since the beginning of 2023.
The company says search activity increases to coincide with earnings announcements from prominent and high-profile companies. For example, when the technology giant, Apple, reported its fourth quarter earnings figures for 2022 on Feb. 2 this year, searches for $Cashtags jumped to eight million. This compared with a daily annual search figure of 4.7 million.
Twitter said that the most commonly used $Cashtag was $TSLA, with $SPY (SPDR S&P 500 ETF) and $BTC (Bitcoin) also ranking in the top five.
Commenting on the announcement, eToro revealed that the plan is to cover more than just U.S. stocks in due course: “The partnership will hopefully see thousands of tickers working as $Cashtags with a route to our platform to learn more. These are being added in a gradual process.”
Investment Conversation
Chris Riedy, Twitter’s vice president of global sales and marketing, said: “Twitter is what’s happening and what people are talking about right now. We believe real change starts with conversation, and finance and investing is a growing part of that conversation.
“We are pleased to partner with eToro to provide Twitter users with additional market insights and greater access to investment capabilities. Twitter will continue to invest in growing the #FinTwitter community.”
Yoni Assia, chief executive and co-founder of eToro, said: “Financial content on social media has provided education to many who have felt excluded by more traditional channels. Twitter has become a crucial part of the retail investing community – it’s where millions of ordinary investors go every day to access financial news, share knowledge and converse.”
“As the social investing network, eToro was built on these very principles – community, knowledge-sharing and better access to financial markets. There is power in shared knowledge, and by transforming investing into a group endeavor, we can yield better results and become more successful, together.”
Several investing platforms contacted by Forbes Advisor UK declined to comment on the announcement. Zoe Gillespie, investment manager at RBC Brewin Dolphin, said: “While eToro is not directly integrated into the social media platform, the tie-in could potentially benefit Twitter financially through referrals to the platform.
“We’d always advise investors to exercise caution where social media and investing become intertwined. We would also encourage investors to check their sources, making sure anything they invest in is regulated, and that they understand the risks associated with unregulated schemes such as cryptocurrencies.”
India’s financial regulator, the Reserve Bank of India, issues frequent warnings to members of the public about the financial dangers of investing in crypto assets, reminding them that it’s possible to lose all their money in these ventures without recourse to compensation.
