Ian Rosen on Nasdaq Trade Talks

Magnifi's Ian Rosen speaks to Nasdaq's Jill Malandrino about how young investors can deal with economic downturns. See the full video and the transcript of the interview below:

Transcript:

Jill Malandrino: Welcome to NASDAQ Trade Talks. I'm Jill Malandrino, Global Markets Reporter at NASDAQ. Joining us for this segment, we have Ian Rosen the Chief Revenue Officer at Magnifi to discuss how young individual investors can approach economic downturns. Ian, it's great to see you. As always, welcome back to Trade Talks.

Ian Rosen: Thanks, Jill. Great to be here.

Jill Malandrino: You got it. What's the impact of financial news on the investor?

Ian Rosen: Too high, I would say. I think that we both have spent time in the media industry and obviously the goal of media is viewers. I think that it scares people, especially people that have not been through this type of cycle before. I think that people have to be careful to not let financial news or any news take them off track for the longer goal. People are going to continue to invest. We did a survey recently that said 60% of people are going to invest more in 2023 than 2022. The question is, are they going to get the tools and guidance to make good decisions? Those decisions have to come with the level of personalization and with good information and intelligence. That's not something that inherently, almost by definition, you can get from financial news.

Jill Malandrino: That is very true. Because when you think about it, the headlines, it's been all about bank deposits since the beginning of the second week of March. We weren't even talking about that in January or February. When you think about it, should people be more worried about the safety of their bank deposits or inflation? What do you think is going to be the bigger impact when you think about investing and the economy?

Ian Rosen: No, that's a great point. I think that this question has been one of the biggest casualties of the last few weeks of news cycle. I don't think people should worry about their deposits at all. I think the banking system is resilient. Their deposits for almost everyone are going to be insured. I think inflation is a very real and very dangerous phenomenon that is an incredible tax on everyone. If your money is not working for you right now, that is absolutely your biggest issue. The idea of taking money out of the system and letting your cash, or cash equivalents, or whatever degrade at between six and 9% is going to eat up your future much more quickly than any possible risk of... As exciting and sexy as these sort of scandals are, it's not what most people should worry about. I think that that's something that needs to be more impressed on people.

Jill Malandrino: Right. I would agree with you there. Tell us about millennial investing behavior and how do they leverage Magnifi's solutions?

Ian Rosen: Yeah, so this is actually one of my favorite topics for many years, but the thing about millennials, millennials are not young anymore. The oldest millennials are in their forties. They have income to invest and savings. But I think the biggest change that occurred, I'm Gen X, in that shift from sort of boomers to Gen X to millennials, is that millennials are inherently very do-it-yourself people. They're used to... We all are, but that's a giant generation that looks for and craves the opportunity to figure out how to do things on their own. That said, they want to invest like they do everything else, which is with a lot more information, a lot more personalization, with the kind of AI driven, or let's forget about the buzzword, but just intelligent tools that understand their goals, who they are, what their needs are, and compare that with high quality intelligence about markets, about history, about trends, about investments.

Magnifi at its core is an AI-driven search marketplace for investments. It helps you understand, "What are the things out there that might align with my needs?" Magnifi Personal is an assistant that uses that marketplace to help align with your personal goals, and needs, and situation. I think that if we think about how we purchase every product in our lives, whether it's this coffee mug in front of me, or a movie, or music or anything, it's done through social and discovery based ways.

There's some vehicle that's looking at "What do you typically do, what do people around you typically do? What do people in your situation typically do? What are your constraints? Are you really into electric vehicles or you're really against some other theme or type of investing," and then pair that. The ability to have an investment handed to you as something that would make sense given your situation or a plan is the way people want to invest. That doesn't really exist today. That is absolutely where the future of investing is going. Magnifi and Magnifi Personal are both tools that are going to help, that are already helping people to buy... I say buy, but it's to invest, but to buy investing products, to get on an investing plan in a way that looks a lot like the way they do everything else as opposed to what I would say is a pretty archaic process in most places today.

Jill Malandrino: Yeah, it's so interesting, Ian, because I am a Gen Xer as well, and I think millennials, I even argue Gen Z because they are truly digital natives, have such a great opportunity. I think about the exposure that you and I had to the first online platforms when you think about archaic and now it's so widely available. They're so tech-savvy that it's amazing for them that they have these kind of opportunities.

Ian Rosen: They expect it. I have two boys, 13 and 15, and I showed them the movie Moneyball, which the whole point of the movie Moneyball from our age is that they've turned this qualitative view into this quantitative view. What was really interesting about watching my boys watch this movie, is that they didn't understand why that was... They didn't get the original point. They grew up in a world where everything is data driven. It's supposed to be data driven. Why wouldn't it be data driven? Why wouldn't that align with your particular situation? I think financial services for a variety of reasons, some of them good, regulatory and other, and some of them not so good, just tech lag, et cetera, has just not moved into the future where we make decisions as individuals in the way we do for every other product.

Jill Malandrino: All right. Ian, appreciate the insight. As always. Thanks for joining us on Trade Talks. I'm Jill Malandrino, Global Markets Reporter at NASDAQ.

Ian Rosen: Thanks for having me.