Almost all my time since I started Wallstrip in 2006 has been about making investing more social and approachable. I continue on this quest as we build and grow Stocktwits.

The mobile phone along with social networks has created huge opportunities for entrepreneurs,investors, companies and products and it feels great that the financial markets are part of this revolution.

Peter Lynch (a great investor for Fidelity) has this great quote:

I agree. A 10 year old can and should be investing. Until recently it was almost impossible and definitely not worth the aggravation.

The first thing a parent can do for a child not 18 years of age is open a Robinhood account (once 18 it is also the first thing a person should do). It’s mobile and it’s fast to set up and trading is FREE. I use it and I love it (biased investor). Already 13 percent of all Stocktwits active users have a Robinhood account.

Every American knows enough about investing (from their purchasing habits alone) to beat Wall Street. The great stocks of every generation come from the products we use all the time – Consumer Brands – Disney, Nike, UnderArmor, Coffee, Cigarettes, Booze, Energy Drinks, Restaurants, Fashion, Consumer Products (Netflix, Apple).

Of course, Wall Street and the media makes it seem impossible because of all the products and industries that exist. They will never stop.

For those that would like to make it less complicated and for those that want to learn, social is the way to go. Almost all decisions individuals can make in 2015 can be made using social networks (your graphs) and intelligence. You may use Trip Advisor or you may just call a friend you trust locally for a hotel. Same for Yelp and Twitter or a local friend for a restaurant…

On Stocktwits we have just started using

#hashtags

to help beginners find what they need. The social coordination of investing information is key. The curated nature and focus of our community will also keep this fresh and on topic.

Stocktwits has a # for #bestchartists, a # for #bestinvestingbooks
and we will slowly be growing these out with the power of our network. Of course you can google subjects, but the social context is definitely here to stay and growing in importance.

Stocktwits has a #mustfollowpodcast hashtag as we have begun to aggregate and produce podcasts with the best traders and investors in the world.

We also have a weekly linkfest #saturdaystudysession of the best investing/trading posts to help people speed along in their learning.

As for ideas, Stocktwits and the web offer millions of ideas a week. Who, What and When to follow remains a vast holy grail. Stocktwits has the easy to use ‘Trending Tickers’ and your own follow list of stocks and people. On the desktop there are incredibly powerful software tools to create ‘lists’ of stocks. You can pay more than $2,000 a month to Bloomberg or get a stock screener for free at many places on the web.

What’s coming next is the unbundling of all these services and silo’s as the smartphone and notifications mature. Read this from Albert Wegner on the ‘Unbundling of Scale‘. I just discovered the post today by reading Fred’s post on ‘Recommending Recommenders‘ another key thought post on the problems being solved by today’s networks.

I will tease you with ‘Spark’ for example, a new app that will launch in October built for a mobile generation. Imagine having access to any list of stock and the stocks themselves within that list at a click of a button. Here are a few screenshots:

It’s a great time to be an investor and trader. The products and information are here and coming in full force to unbundle archaic workflows.