Show HN: Senzu – collection of robo advisors, p2p lending and more
senzu.io
senzu.io
So cheers for working on this problem.
I don't mean to hate on your new product...But what the hell are those estimated returns numbers?
Those should probably be removed asap.
I'm not sure where you are in the building/testing phase for this so maybe a lot more changes are coming. At this point it's not obvious this first iteration simplifies investing for someone new to it and may seriously be making things worse. Put yourself in the shoes of a first time investor arriving at your site, might they still have questions before feeling ready to choose an investment company to click on and are you helping answer at least some of those initial questions...
What are those risk and liquidity things? How did you come up with that? Are blue links affiliate links to these companies? if so are there no rules for these programs?
Are you guys comfortable with how robo-advisors and investing work?...Each clients situation will be unique based on things like their age and their goals, etc. so information should be presented with that in mind. If you're not comfortable with details of this stuff I would think twice before launching this particular site.
Sorry if this came across as rude. I wouldn't want someone to get confused or deceived.
Happy to answer any questions.
When it comes to investment products like these, there is no way to know what the future return will be.
Imagine for example a new first time investor visits the site. They are unfamiliar with these types of products. If they see something like "estimated returns: 8.5%" that person might mistakenly think that's the type of return from choosing that investment company.... Which of course is not true. It could be higher it could be much lower. No one knows what will happen in the stock and bond markets in the future.
Now I realize you are not selling these investment products yourself, but the government's rules for disclosure and advertising can give a lot of insight about how to avoid confusing or misleading potential investors. You will see even in cases where past performance is mentioned, there is a clear disclaimer that 'past performance is no guarantee of its future success'. If one needs to be that careful to avoid confusion regarding showing past returns, hopefully you see why estimating future returns are treated even stricter. https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/mfperform.htm
How did you get those numbers?
If you hover over some of the elements you will see more info
If you want to use a 90/10 you can but something for a more typical portfolio or a way to adjust the buckets seems to be a more common practice. One reason is if a person visits a site and just sees returns from a 90/10, that would be misleading if this person needs a totally different portfolio with a different risk profile (maybe someone a bit older who needs a 60/40). More text can help clarify what is going on.
I clicked on the Acorns portfolio and it's not even technically 90/10. It's 30% real estate - it's biggest holding. This isn't your fault as many people can and do call REITs stocks because of them being traded on stock exchanges. But really they are trusts investing in real estate. So if someone already owns or is about to buy real estate and they want to diversity their other future savings into stocks and bonds, then calling REITs stocks is not helpful.
Quote from Vanguard REIT website: "Appropriate for helping diversify the risks of stocks and bonds in a portfolio." If REITs are stocks how are they appropriate to help diversify the risk of stocks....Can be confusing to someone new to investing. https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundIntExt=I...
One more thing to keep an eye on is how you show returns if you are going to. Averaging annual returns or annualized returns can be tricky.
For example. If the last three years returns are 8%, 8% and 8%. Are the average returns 8% or 8.7%?
This gets more extreme with real numbers as just in the last 10 years stocks have been as low -37% and as high as +32%. Whats the average return for these years -2.5% or -8.4%. Big difference.
Just to be clear I think it's OK to compare products side by side and show historical returns. But I would be really careful that you're disclosing the necessary information and making sure you are comparing the same things apples to apples.
GIPS is "A global standard for investment performance reporting gives investors around the world the additional transparency they need to compare and evaluate investment managers."
There's a link to the current handbook on the right. It's free.