Social Media an Increasingly Valuable for Share Traders

SYDNEY, Mar. 23 / PRNewswire-AsiaNet / --
- Twitter and Facebook Revealed as Popular and up to the Minute

The second section of the latest CMC Markets (http://www.cmcmarkets.com.au/) Share Trader Insight Survey: A Look Into What Drives Today's Share Traders was released today. Part 02, entitled 'Share traders and social media', offers compelling insights into how Australians who actively engage in Australian equity share trading (http://www.cmcmarkets.com.au/trading-platforms/share-trading) are increasingly turning to social media.

Our key finding is that if someone likes to trade shares, then they are far more likely to now turn to social media like Twitter and Facebook to help them make more informed trading decisions. Social media allows them to access snippets of important market information more quickly and easily than traditional methods.

For further information and to access the research charts, please visit: http://www.cmcmarkets.com.au/STIS.

Increasing knowledge

David Land, Head of Analysis and Education at CMC Markets (http://www.cmcmarkets.com.au/), comments: "As a stockbroking business, we find that social media channels are becoming increasingly popular with people who are just starting out in share trading (http://www.cmcmarkets.com.au/trading-platforms/share-trading). They provide an opportunity for them to learn how to deal with movements in the financial markets in real time."

In fact, half of all investors surveyed who use Facebook to gain trading knowledge are aged between just 25 and 34.

Mr Land continues: "While it remains very important to get information from reputable sources, the information age has been a boon for traders. From our perspective, it has also opened all sorts of new avenues to educate traders. Take our new CMC Markets blog (http://blog.cmcmarkets.com.au/) as an example - it's something that we are particularly pleased with and is getting a lot of interest."

Social media usage: Facebook, iPhones and Twitter

The survey reveals that there is a clear age difference in those who choose to use Twitter over iPhones to gather trading information. Twitter proves most popular with traders under 35 years of age (59%), while mature investors aged 45 and over are more likely to use their iPhone to acquire trading information.

Says Mr Land: "Social media has changed the way share traders think, with websites like Twitter (http://twitter.com/CMCMarketsANZ) providing information that may affect a trader's plan or strategy, or the way in which they enter or exit a position. Twitter is particularly remarkable in that it provides immediate analysis of events in the market, not to mention almost perfectly real-time news which is replacing some of the more 'traditional' internet media."

Trading forums are a popular form of social media at 28%, followed by blogs at 18% and webinars at 9%.

Conducting trades

Given Australians are an increasingly mobile population, it is interesting to see that a combined 17% of traders conduct at least some of their trades in transit (for example, while they are on the train or bus), at an airport or in a restaurant or cafe. Still, the large majority of traders execute their trades at home (83%), followed by at the workplace (43%).

Offering advice

Frequent traders turn out to be the ones who are most enthusiastic about offering trade information to others on social media (over 25%), whereas regular traders are more reluctant to share their trading information on social media (8%).

"It comes down to personality to a large extent, but I also think that people who spend all day trading like to spend all day thinking and talking about trading too - Twitter makes it easier for them to communicate with their trading buddies," Mr Land notes.

About CMC Markets
The CMC Markets Group, a leading independent financial services provider, offers a range of investment products and investment tools including shares, options, listed managed investments, warrants, interest rate securities and Contracts for Difference (CFDs). Through our partnerships we can also provide access to managed funds and margin lending execution. In 2007 CMC Markets launched its broking service with the acquisition of Andrew West Stockbroking and CMC Markets Stockbroking is now one of the only non-bank aligned, online stockbrokers in Australia. CMC Markets' institutional partner Goldman Sachs owns a 10% stake in the company.

CMC Markets is a pioneer of CFD trading in Australia and a world leading CFD provider. With offices in London, Frankfurt, Dublin, Madrid, Vienna, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Beijing, Auckland, and Singapore, CMC Markets represents clients in over 70 countries. The company was founded in 1989 and is regulated by ASIC in Australia. CMC Markets Stockbroking is a participant of the ASX Group.

http://www.cmcmarkets.com.au

ENDS

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