Don’t Take Investment Advice from a Baby

etrade-baby

Now don’t get me wrong, E*TRADE is a great company and has a very user friendly website.  Their inception greatly reduced transaction costs in the market and improved overall market efficiency.  And yes, the baby is adorable.

But the E*TRADE Baby commercials are a way of talking down to the average person.  They’re basically saying that anyone can jump into the market and make money.  I mean c’mon, even a baby can do it, right?

Just as having uninformed voters in an election is a bad thing, having uninformed participants in the market is bad for everyone as well.  I think it’s wrong for a company to be understating the complexity of the market and encouraging people to gamble their money away.

What we get from this situation are an increased number of uninformed investors, a great deal of emotional investing, and increased volatility for everyone.  Maybe next they’ll make a commercial where the E*TRADE Baby explains why you lost 35% of your retirement assets last year.

[Photo Credit: etrade.com]

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