Stock Trading - Entry 32

As promised, the following are some interesting things I have recently discovered about exchanges, both for stocks and blockchains. As usual, these are my personal opinions and I am NOT providing financial advice.

Ok, so I woke up one morning and got annoyed that some trades I had entered the previous afternoon had not gone through. That mean nothing the previous afternoon and nothing so far that morning. There were no trading halts on any of those stocks, so I was curious. Then I discovered the TSX, being an old institution, has trading hours!

What got me was they start rolling out of bed at 7am and trading doesn't start until 9:30am.

Ok, so apparently I wake up early. What about the preceding day? The lights effectively go out at 5pm. So why didn't it trade? Things tend to slow at 3:50pm and then at some random time between 3:56 and 3:57, a freeze period begins. Ok, so no new work is taken and they start prepping to leave the office.

A very human way to work apparently. So I wanted to file a complaint, but to whom? Apparently, to a company called X.

Yup, the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) is owned by a private company, the TMX Group, whose ticker symbol is X. And yes, the stock price is pricey and they do regular dividends to boot. Blew my mind, but it makes sense in a way.

Ok, so what about blockchain exchanges? In Canada there are a fair number, but I was interested in regulated ones. I found two, BitBuy and Netcoins. Who owns them? BitBuy is owned by WonderFI Technologies (WNDR) and Netcoins is owned by BIGG Digital Assets (BIGG). Newsflash #20: Regulated Canadian stock and crypto exchanges are owned by private companies that are also, currently, publicly traded.

What I find particularly amusing is the former has a web page here that lists companies in the blockchain sphere. BIGG Digital Assets is not listed - and why would they? They are competitors!!

So what did I do in response? Well, I didn't invest in X. I don't like their client service standards, the stock price is pricey for me, and according to this article they are continuing their diversification into mining in Brazil. But they are a solid company with little competition (not true if you count the blockchain sphere), have a big profit margin, and have strong growth according to this article.

What about the two crypto exchanges? I bought both.

For WonderFi, they are entering profitability, are well-established, and charge fees on buys and sells.

According to BIGG's website they are growing, are profitable, are in the real credit card sphere (which I will get into in a later article), and have a decent C-suite IMO. Plus, they are positioning themselves very well if you look at their investor deck.

Combine all the above with the fact that both have already undergone the typical prices dips I see with new publicly-traded companies and that both have share prices under thirty cents (as of publishing this article), I couldn't resist to get both of my feet on those bandwagons.

Now, this got me to thinking, what is so different when you compare those two blockchain exchange companies with, say, Bitcoin Bank. Well, the two I bought are regulated exchanges. In the wild west that the blockchain sphere still is, a little bit of investor confidence matters to me, especially since cryptocurrencies are not considered legal tender in Canada and those protections do not apply.

Thankfully, regulated exchanges do have some protections. From what I see, they involve guard rails for investors as well as some involvement in forensics and investigations. Should I invest on either exchange, I am limited in the amount I can buy in a calendar year - kind of like deposits into a TFSA. You might not be able to buy a million dollars worth every few days, but you can still make some nice coin (if you catch my drift).

Speaking of nice coins, my next article will dive into whether or not my view of investing in actual blockchain tokens remains unshaken. Subscribe for free below to become notified right when I publish that article and to see what I do or don't consider investing in next. Alternatively, you can bookmark this page that contains a list of all my entries in my stock trading journey I publish on Vocal Media.