Stake, an Australian platform that connects investors outside the United States to the American stock market, arrives in Latin America. The platform started operating in Brazil through a shortlist, opened on September 22. The official launch, to all investors, takes place this Wednesday.
Founded in 2017, Stake has more than 150,000 customers in Australia, United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The platform arrives in Latin America offering services in Portuguese, zero brokerage fees, no minimum investment limit, and access to more than 3,800 US exchange shares and US-Listed ETFs.
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Stake intends to be one more option for Brazilian investors wanting to diversify their portfolio. “In the next six months, we will expand our mission to change the way Brazilian and Latin American investors see this market, dynamically encouraging the search for new opportunities. We also have plans to increase operations in other European countries during this period,” said Matthew Leibowitz, CEO and founder of Stake.
A waiting list of around 7,000 people participated in the beta launch of the platform last month. For the new investors, the platform offers an advantage: any investor who transfers funds to the platform within the first 24 hours after opening the account can spin a virtual roulette and win a share of Nike, Dropbox, or GoPro.
The platform also has a system where users can refer to friends: for each new registration followed by a deposit made by the referred investor, the user will be able to spin the virtual roulette once again.
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In addition to not charging any brokerage fee, Stake says the cost to the customer will only be the currency spread (around 2%) on deposit and withdrawal. The yields can be reapplied in dollars to the portfolio at no cost and the firm says it is possible to invest fractionally, that is, to buy any dollar amount of any share.
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According to Stake, the investor has the option of not converting the amounts into BRL if he reinvests them in dollars again. “This is an advantage of investing directly, as the investor is at risk of this high exchange rate volatility between one operation and another,” stresses Paulo Kulikovsky, director of operations for Latin America at Stake.
