Sid Sahgal
Online investment service Macrovue has unveiled a world first online brokerage and trading platform giving Australian investors easy and transparent access to global equity markets.
Based on a thematic approach, investors can access Macrovue’s award-winning financial technology and market-leading research and technical smarts.
“Digital financial technology has helped create a power shift in the investment value chain that elevates individual investors to the same access level as institutions,” said Macrovue co-founder and CEO Sid Sahgal.
“We have purpose-built a platform to directly help everyday Australians who want to buy offshore listed companies or invest in broader global investment themes. To date, these opportunities have been highly intermediated, expensive, or just simply out of reach,” he said.
“Our sights are set firmly on empowering a greater number of investors who want one hassle-free process to execute on their chosen investment idea or theme, acquiring global stocks at low cost, with full performance and tax reporting included”.
Mr Sahgal said the co-founders were led to create Macrovue after scouring available service offerings.
“What we initially discovered were limited ways to access global markets, outside of pooled managed funds or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Even managed account platforms are not equipped to provide investors the capability to directly buy and sell global listed stocks,” he said.
Macrovue is highly cost competitive.
It charges investors a low brokerage fee, and fixed subscription cost to access its proprietary research. The customisable Macrovue platform allows access to over 20,000 companies listed on 18 global exchanges.
Introducing investable macro themes or ‘vues’
Mr Sahgal said Macrovue does the research for investors and helps create portfolios of shares built around global themes and megatrends poised to benefit from long-term structural changes in the global economy.
A team of in-house equity research analysts researches companies around the world to build portfolios of stocks called ‘Vues’. Investors are saved the additional worry of researching foreign stocks with limited information. The website also provides detailed performance tracking and tax reporting.
Macrovue co-founder and Director Dev Sinha, who also leads Macrovue’s Equity Research and Product Development, said each Vue usually consists of 10 stocks.
“An important feature is that our Vues are not managed funds,” Mr Sinha said. “Each stock is visible and the investor is the beneficial owner.”
The company has developed a proprietary multi-factor stock selection model to filter and rank each stock from the more than 20,000 stocks available. This is followed by a fundamental bottom-up analysis of the stocks.
“Thematic investing helps identify industries and companies leveraged towards structural growth, that in turn we would expect to drive revenues and profits.
“Most themes impact value chains which span multiple industries. Done in a balanced fashion, investing on a theme offers a natural diversification across geographies and industries,” Mr Sinha said.
“Thematic investing also enables you to get behind ideas or causes you are passionate about – whether it is clean energy, disruptive technologies, or the rise of luxury brand consumables in China,” he said.
Quality people, processes and technology
Macrovue is one of a few Australian companies to have registered with the Internal Revenue Service in the United States, meaning investors are saved the bother of completing paper forms when buying US company stocks.
A recent senior addition is Mr Clay Carter, a well respected and sought after commentator on world markets and the global economy. Mr Carter brings more than 25 years’ experience as a global portfolio manager investing in international equities.
Mr Sahgal concluded: “We have developed an entirely unique platform. It’s a very exciting time as financial technology is opening up access for self-directed investors to participate with greater ease in the trends driving global capital and equity markets.”
