Have you ever looked at a tech company and thought, ‘Damn, I wish I’d invested in that’? Well stop, because unless you’ve invented time-travel, it’s never going to happen that way. Besides, your first stop is to warn everyone about 2020, and possibly travel to 2016 to help defeat Biff Tannen in the US elections. But it’s still possible to own bits of high-end tech companies now, and FNB’s giving South Africans their crack at it. What’s more, it may not cost all that much.
Trust me, I know what I’m doing
FNB is offering its customers (and people it would like to be its customers) — both individual and institutional — the chance to invest in the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Tesla, Coca Cola and Alphabet, among other high-end companies, via its 10 Exchange Traded Notes. This is a stock market thing we’re not sure we fully understand but it goes like this:
FNB listed its 10 Exchange Traded Notes (ETN) on the JSE on 1 October this year. The notes are “…exchange-traded instruments that provide investors access to a wide variety of wealth creation assets”, which is a fancy way of saying you can invest in your favourite tech company (on the list) by getting yourself some of these financial thingies. Via FNB’s share trading platform, found either on the FNB Online service or the FNB app, that is.
Contact your financial advisor
FNB Wealth and Investments and Ashburton CEO Sizwe Nxedlana said, “Global fractional shares provide for an innovative product, designed specifically with financial inclusion in mind. Our aim is to drastically minimise barriers to entry for individual customers and institutional investors.”
“Over the years, we have invested heavily to building platform capabilities in our investment business and this is starting to manifest in solutions which are customer-centric, and valuable for customers across all income categories. In a time of global uncertainty, investors cannot overlook opportunities to diversify but more importantly this particular offering means that every single individual or institution in South Africa has an equal opportunity to own shares beyond our borders.”
FNB says you can own bits of various (very successful) companies from as little as R10. But, given our exchange rate and economy, you’re probably not going to own very much. But enough, perhaps, to correctly add the words ‘Apple shareholder’ to your Twitter bio. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?