Given Galloway’s view of how poorly many tech companies have been run as businesses, it’s no wonder that he thinks fintech is one of the overhyped ideas, as well as the concept of democratizing investing in general. His favorite whipping boy here, he said, is Robinhood.
“I think this is a terrible company, and I’ve been saying so for a long time. Robinhood’s tagline should be ‘The more you trade, the more you lose.’ Eighty percent of day traders lose money. If you’re having a great time on Robinhood, enjoy it. But don’t kid yourself that it’s investing,” he said.
On a slide of options contract volume in the first quarter of 2020, Robinhood had 25,840 options contracts traded for every dollar in an average customer’s account, while the comparable figures for other platforms were 2,188 for TD Ameritrade, 1,844 for E-Trade and 292 for Charles Schwab. Those 25,840 options contracts produced 56% of Robinhood’s revenue.
“I find the level of risk here is just insane,” he said. “This is a shady business. The average account size is $240, and they’re hemorrhaging accounts.”
Web 3.0, where people can invest and trade without regulation, offers a decentralized version of the internet, and Galloway said there’s no there there. “Call me a boomer, but I think this is all total bullshit,” he said, adding that he believes these apps open the door to massive fraud. “Trust is key, and the key to trust is regulators.”
His thoughts on space tourism were equally ungenerous. “So people get to spend $400,000 on a ticket to fly three times as high as I flew here from JFK, for eight minutes, and then come back down,” he said. “There’s no accomplishment here.”
The sectors that are being underhyped, however, are offering investors opportunities to both make money and help make the world a better place, he said, which is ultimately where the real value is.
Telehealth, for example, brings more healthcare to more people in ways that make it easier for them to get help, he said. A two-hour door-to-door doctor’s appointment can now be replaced by a 15-minute video visit. Then there’s femtech, a category of software and services meant to address women’s health. Galloway said the potential boom here hasn’t even started, as this is a sector where he sees massive underinvestment.
“It’s no accident that the first company in healthtech was called Hims, and focused on [erectile dysfunction] and hair replacement,” he said. He gave a shout-out to Hey Jane, which provides medical abortions, with fewer side effects and a lower cost than invasive abortions.
“It’s a wonderful company,” he said. “There’s all sorts of innovation around healthcare for women vis-à-vis technology.”