INVESTING SHARES MADE EASY WITH CAPITEC & EASYEQUITIES
Renowned financial analyst and journalist, Arabile Gumede shares his advice when it comes to investing in shares – a wise financial decision made easier with Capitec and EasyEquities.
Financial journalist Arabile Gumede is one of South Africa’s leading writers, commentators, and news anchors in the field of finance. With a passion to share his experience and financial knowledge with others, Arabile attributes his success to being raised by a resourceful mother. The Insider SA visits Arabile at his home in Randburg to learn more about how he became the man he is today.
Arabile shares, “My passion for finance grew from my mother. Unfortunately, my mother lost her job at an early age in my life which meant we had to learn to use a little to go a long way”. Arabile continues, “There were many years were we lived without any lights. We used candle lights and a paraffin stove; we often didn’t know where our next meal was going to come from”.
Arabile spent his life working odd jobs just to make sure there was food on the table. However, this journey built up tenacity, an unshakable spirit of hard work and diligence, and ultimately, a drive to understand money better.
Ten years later and Arabile is now a trusted voice in the South African economy and finance community. He laughs while saying, “I guess it’s taken me ten years to become an overnight superstar”.
As someone who prides himself in sharing informative financial advice and knowledge, Arabile shares his take on investing in shares. “Buying shares is one element that a lot of people just want to get into but never know how to do so”.
Firstly, Arabile recommends knowing your personal circumstances and financial goals since so much of investment is based on risk. His top tip is also to find credible sites that are widely known and used – that way you can trust the knowledge coming from it to have a better understanding about South African and global markets.
“Apps like EasyEquities help people to get the basics right. They’ve made it so easy to invest on a day to day basis because now you actually see what is going on”, explains Arabile. EasyEquities is an innovative, online platform which allows anyone to buy shares and grow their wealth no matter how small their investment. For first-time investors, you can seamlessly enter the stock market for as little as R5 and right from your phone.
Carly Barnes from EasyEquities shares the motivation behind their platform, explaining, “Historically, investing is the best way to grow your wealth for the long term. We have this problem of South Africans desperately needing to actually grow their wealth and change the narrative in this country but no way to do that. So EasyEquities was really born out of this need to make it easy, to make it affordable, and to make it non-exclusive. The vision was to democratise share ownership and to lower the barriers of entry to investing for everybody”.
Carly explains that you can invest with whatever amount of money you have. Even if a share is priced at R1000, you can invest in a piece of that share for R100.
As a bank that’s also invested in democratising access to financial services, Capitec teamed up with EasyEquities to offer their clients an opportunity to invest and also save money. Capitec clients can link to their EasyEquities account, cut their transaction fees, and therefore qualify for a 20% discount.
The Insider SA caught up with Mpilo Mkhize, a Capitec client and internal auditor at Capitec who chose to invest through the EasyEquities app. “The app allowed me the opportunity to play with the idea of investing shares. I then started investing on the live market. EasyEquities has allowed me to diversify my risk portfolio by spreading out my investments. It also provides me with the visibility that I need to see how my investments are currently doing”.
Arabile concludes with these words of wisdom: “The important thing here is to find what works for you. Never try to think that you need to invest big bucks in order to get the big returns. The more you begin to understand and the more you begin to engrain yourself with the knowledge needed to invest more, the better it will be”.
Start your investment journey by accessing EasyEquities through the latest version of the Capitec Banking App. Open the app, navigate to “widgets”, and find the EasyEquities icon. Existing EasyEquities clients can easily sign in and link their accounts, and new clients can follow the registration process and start investing today.
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