If you watched last week’s episode of Let’s Talk Markets, you learned a bit more about We The Investors and what this movement has to do with Urvin. If you haven’t watched last week’s episode (and you definitely should), we’ll break it down for you here.
It’s like this:
Urvin is a business dedicated to providing you with greater access to, education on, and engagement with the markets. Our Terminal platform is designed to deliver these services.
By contrast, We The Investors is a not-for-profit investor advocacy group dedicated to improving access, transparency, fairness and equality in the markets through regulatory improvements. These improvements are only possible through the dedication of WTI’s more than 100,000 members.
Urvin and We The Investors are separate entities, but we share many of the same principals and principles. (See what we did there?)
Anyway, we just thought this would be a good place to clarify the relationship between Urvin and WTI because, honestly, it’s gotten kind of serious. But…there are some strings attached.
One Way Street
To reiterate—Urvin is a business that is structured to turn a profit. We The Investors is a movement structured to create regulatory change. As such, we feel it only appropriate that we direct traffic down a one way street.
What we mean to say is that we will never use We The Investors as a channel to promote Urvin. Nor will we ever use We The Investors as a way to funnel new users to the Urvin platform. Our sole mission at We The Investors is to promote the rights of individual investors. We will never use WTI to sell you a product.
That said…those of you who are already familiar with Urvin’s platform know that we have an increasingly kick-ass product…a product in Beta, but a kick-ass product nonetheless.
Here at Urvin, we will absolutely and unabashedly use that product to promote the work of We The Investors.
Why? Well, we are the investors–all of us. Individual investors are the inspiration for Urvin and the lifeblood of our mission. We The Investors stand for everything that Urvin hopes to achieve. And the way we see it, the education, access and engagement we’re channeling through the Urvin platform are exactly what you need to get involved.
More than anything else, Urvin offers an active and engaged community of individual investors just like you—many of whom just want to know that they're not alone. Urvin and its more than 20,000 Beta users are proof that you’re not alone…and We The Investors is your opportunity to do something about it.
Sorry For Yelling
WTI provides a unified voice for individual investors. Believe it or not, there are those who would rather not hear that voice, and who would even spend their own millions to silence us. That just means we have to shout loud enough to be heard over the sound of disinformation, fear-mongering and all the other lies that money can buy.
Well, we don’t have millions to spend influencing lawmakers like they do. But we do have millions of voices. The more of us there are, the easier it gets to be heard without shouting.
We’re not just saying it either. This is actually working.
WTI has steered Congressional calling campaigns, Comment Letter campaigns, and face to face meetings with decision makers at the SEC and on Capitol Hill, all to the end of making your voice heard.
And believe us when we say that, they can hear you. How do we know?
Well, for one thing, somebody mentioned our name in Congress.
Thanks for Thinking Of Us But…
Some of you may recall that earlier this month, Representative Byron Donalds (R.-FL), during a House Financial Services hearing, asked SEC Chair Gary Gensler the following:
“You allegedly asked Senator [Tammy] Baldwin’s staff…to contact an organization called We The Investors to submit comment letters in favor of the 13-d proposal. Subsequently, the SEC was flooded with 350+ comment letters from so-called individuals but mostly form letters stamped with the moniker in favor of their proposal. It appears to me that you have engaged in astroturfing to advance your own agenda. Is this true?”
As much as we’re flattered to be mentioned, we must take exception to the characterization here.
Flooded? Are you kidding? 350 Comment letters is a gentle mist on a warm summer’s eve. When we flood the SEC with comment letters, you’ll know it.
Take for instance, the Final Rule from the SEC for Short Position and Short Activity Reporting by Institutional Investment Managers. We The Investors submitted almost 2000 Comment Letters for that one–perhaps not a full-fledged flood but at least a storm surge. If you're curious to know what was contained in these letters, you can read the Final Rule itself.
The SEC cited comment letters from We The Investors more than a dozen times in the Final Rule. So if you were one of the nearly 2000 actual, real human individuals who submitted a Comment letter, then you had an actual, real, human impact on how the Final Rule was written.
That’s good.
On the other hand, our comment letters called for far more robust reporting rules than what the SEC is proposing. So it could have gone a lot better.
But let us not understate the significance of what’s happening here. Individual investors–everyday people like you and me–were cited in the Final Rule for a regulatory proposal. That’s not a thing that happens a whole lot, or ever. It’s proof that we’re already changing things, already becoming a part of a process that has held everyday investors at arm’s length for too long.
These citations mean that you are being heard, even if the actual substance of the Final Rule suggests they’re only hearing your message in bits and pieces. But hey…the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Of course, that journey is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish. Suffice it to say, there are those in Washington D.C. who aren’t that happy to see us hanging around.
There are even those that view We The Investors as a threat to the status quo. If Representative Byron Donalds doubted our existence, he has no doubt been dispelled of this misconception by now. You made sure of it by lighting up his social media with proof of life. But we secretly suspect he knew we were real all along. Why else go to the trouble of attacking our credibility?
Anyway, I’d dignify his astroturfing claims by typing out a response if my fingers weren’t all jammed up into these sock puppets.
The point is that regulators see We The Investors as a voice that must be acknowledged; and defenders of the status quo see We The Investors as a threat.
Our message is the same to both parties. We The Investors movement is here, it’s growing, and it’s not going away.
With all of this in mind, Urvin Ed is wholly dedicated to empowering you with knowledge, education and community. And we encourage you to pool this power at We The Investors. Everything that happens today is merely the beginning.
Dave Lauer is a co-founder and CEO of Urvin Finance, where he leads the team in building Urvin Terminal. Prior to founding Urvin Finance, Dave spent over a decade advocating for financial market reform after quitting his job as a high-frequency-trader.