Three years ago, in 2021, an American financial analyst named Keith Gill became an Internet phenomenon with his deep-seated belief in beleaguered retailer GameStop. He constantly advocated for the company on his YouTube channel and Reddit sub-forum WallStreetBets, and bought shares and options worth tens of thousands of dollars. His unshakeable faith, backed by his own analysis, converted many. It became a worldwide movement. Tens of thousands of retail investors poured money into the GameStop stock and sent it skyrocketing. At Gill’s peak, he was estimated to be worth $48 million, with one GameStop share topping at US$483. Today, the price has cratered to the low tens.
I was there when this frenzy occurred. The hubbub swept me up. Together with some friends, we, too, bought shares and calls, and keenly monitored the price movements on our brokerage apps. For a short period, 930pm became the most anticipated hour in our daily lives. It’s the time when the American markets open.
Gavin Chia was there at the height of the craze. He had front row seats, too, being the CEO of Moomoo Singapore, a digitalised brokerage and wealth management platform. “The GameStop meme-stock craze in 2021 propelled amateur enthusiasts into the market, giving retail traders unprecedented power and influence. Today, over $20 trillion of retail client assets exist in over 100 million brokerage accounts,” says Chia.
That’s a lot of money, and Chia notes that the GameStop episode wouldn’t have been possible without the rise of online brokerages such as RobinHood and Moomoo. Today, the latter has over 21 million users across the globe. In Singapore, over 800,000 people are on the platform, or about one in four Singaporean adults.
In a poll conducted by Moomoo in the middle of last year, it discovered that 50 percent of its clients “locked in profits” over the preceding year. “These remarkable numbers came in a period of extreme volatility. Despite geopolitical tensions, an aggressive interest rate hike regime, earnings pressure, and rising recession risks, investors continued to outperform by leveraging technology to unlock profits,” says Chia.
Moomoo, too, has been performing well. According to Chia, the group’s trading volume in the third quarter of 2023 reached HK$1.1 trillion (S$170 billion), a 0.5 percent increase from the same period in the previous year. Active clients and client assets also grew substantially.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore also recently gave in-principle approval to Moomoo Singapore for a Major Payment Institution Licence, specifically for digital payment token services. With this, users can now buy and sell digital payment tokens on the platform. It’s aimed at cryptocurrency traders and investors, and makes business sense. Chia says, “Institutional investors in Singapore view cryptocurrency as a long-term investment, with three in four Singaporeans showing that they intend to increase their crypto allocations in 2024, driven by the expectation of higher future returns, according to a survey conducted by Swiss crypto bank Sygnum.”
For Chia, Singapore will be the company’s regional headquarters, as it sets its sights on South-east Asia. It recently opened an office in Malaysia, and has plans for more. Beyond that, the company has been regularly updating its offerings on the app—there is no desktop platform. There’s fractionalised investing although unfortunately, users cannot reinvest their dividends. Chia says, however, that Moomoo is constantly updating and enhancing the platform. “In 2022, we made over 8,500 product improvements based on user feedback,” he says.
Chia’s portfolio on Moomoo, however, resembles nothing like mine. There are no meme stocks like GameStop. Instead, he “focuses mainly on tech stocks due to their growth potential” and “interest-rate-sensitive products like Money Market Funds for stability”.
