Thought I’d share this for interest…
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Notwithstanding current strain on a lot of people’s personal finances, the untapped opportunity looks to be significant.
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This doesn’t surprise me!
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I can’t see it changing any time soon. It feels as though there is a stigma around investing with it being associated with the ‘rich’, thus preventing the government from providing any incentives to encourage people (let alone the squeeze on personal savings). In fact the changes the Tories made around dividend and CGT allowances went the opposite way.
Could just be limited to my friends, but some of those who are interested in making their money work for them will only touch crypto. When I tell them about my approach (value investing) they roll their eyes, unless it’s going to multi bag in a year or two they don’t see the point! That said…I’m the foolish looking one at the moment 
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Not surprised at all and such a shame it isn’t taught at an early age. Whenever I try and speak to colleagues or friends about long term investing most of the time they immediately jump to thoughts of day trading and often tell me they prefer to leave their money in banks, even current accounts!
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I think a lot of wealth goes into property. People invest in their homes and see bricks and motar as something tangible although price increases have seen this been hammered over the past decade
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This is a massive own goal. Astonishing.
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Same, my friends only have cash ISAs.
Their only investments are in their company pensions and even then, I doubt they realise they are ‘investments’ in funds.
They see my investing as gambling.
I mean I do like the odd gamble, but what I do with my Paddy Power account is nothing like what I do with my Freetrade account (if only I were more successful with my bets! 
)
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All the kids (18 year olds from my retail job) ask me if I invest in Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency. I tell them I only do stocks and bonds and they looked stunned. So I’m not surprised either.
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The class divide has translated into Stocks v Crypto… pretty depressing I’ll be honest. The barriers of entry into stocks are now minimal. Adverts and info everywhere. People just want to chase a quick risky return with crypto. Strange
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Same reason why people do the lottery. Everyone wants to win! But where there is one winner there is a million losers.
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And worse still, people receive confirmation bias because the winners are featured in the media and the losers are invisible, so it adds to the incentive to people to play the lottery.
Long before I discovered investing, I used to have a monthly play of one of the minor lotteries. I occasionally won £10 with three numbers and thought that four numbers (for £100k) inevitably ought to come up eventually. Never did and eventually I got fed up and exited. Wish I’d saved the money instead now!
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Hey Weenie, if you bet on my team (Man United) to lose each week, you will be a millionaire by the end of 2025 
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I wonder if people dont realise that they invest in stocks and shares via their pensions if they are enrolled in one which I think most working people should be automatically now.
It is eye opening how many people have no savings at all.
More than 11 million working-age people in Britain don’t have basic “rainy day” savings of at least £1,000, according to a report that warns that the poorest households are struggling to build up financial resilience amid the cost of living crisis.
The Resolution Foundation said people across Britain faced a “triple savings challenge” of insufficient savings, an inability to cope financially with major life events such as family breakdown, and inadequate retirement incomes.
It said 11.2 million people lived in households that had savings of less than £1,000, accounting for about one in three working-age households. As many as half lived in the poorest third of households in Britain.
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I find that when I bet on United to win, they tend to lose so it’s like my bet is a jinx on them 
And as a Liverpool supporter, I of course want United to lose 
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In the same way that the media always portrays “investors” as either gaining massive profits or losing everything from gambling on single stocks.
Unfortunately, index funds don’t make click bait news as they’re not exciting, they don’t make anyone rich quick and people don’t seem to be interested in getting wealthy over the long term.
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If i had known this i wouldnt have been so supportive of your progress on the dividend thread…
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Less than the Germans? This is a country with a (soon to be former) chancellor and former foreign minister who keeps all his money in a savings account
The kids want crypto and FT won’t give it to them. That’s why Freetrade’s stock price hasn’t moved in 5 years.
Not really the thread for this discussion but… why would anyone want to buy crypto via freetrade? There are already so many well known exchanges with well established user bases and decent liquidity, what would freetrade do that would be more attractive than their offerings?
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Freetrade has plenty of young investors on the platform. You’re quite right they will go elsewhere to many of the other good platforms like Revolut and Robinhood if they can’t get crypto on FT.
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