Our Q3 2026 Modern Investor Pulse surveyed nearly 3,000 retail investors worldwide on how they're investing right now, and the results carry real implications for every platform, issuer, and asset manager trying to engage them.
‍

In this bonus episode of Retail Investors Decoded, Head of Partnerships Fraser Munro joins the show to unpack the data with our host Carl Hazeley, and what it means for anyone building products and content for self-directed retail investors.
‍

AI Is reshaping research, not the decision to start investing

41% of investors now use AI at least weekly for investment research. But the Pulse data shows AI's role splits into two distinct phases. Getting started is still overwhelmingly human: 40% of investors say a conversation with someone they trust triggered their first investment, versus just 5% who credit AI. Once investors are active, though, AI becomes a research companion.
‍

The takeaway for platforms and issuers: AI optimization matters, but it can't replace the real-world, real-time conversations, at events, in community, in person, that get people investing in the first place. Being part of that conversation is also what feeds the AI layer, since AI tends to favor recent, well-covered, widely discussed information.

Investors are staying invested, but want more guidance

70% of investors think markets will be higher in 12 months, and history from previous geopolitical flashpoints suggests investors respond to volatility by diversifying into baskets and themes, not by pulling out. The opportunity for issuers isn't convincing people to stay invested; it's meeting them where their confidence is lowest.
‍

Two areas stand out from the Pulse as high-interest, low-confidence zones: stocks and ETFs, where 11% of investors currently hold more than $200,000 in liquid cash waiting to be deployed, and derivatives, an increasingly popular but still-complex category where investors want more support before committing capital.

The ETF opportunity is storytelling, not simplicity

ETFs are meant to be the simple option, yet they consistently show up as a knowledge gap in the data. The issue isn't the product; investors understand what an ETF is. It's differentiation. With more ETFs on the market than individual stocks, and increasing complexity from active, leveraged, and thematic products, investors struggle to know why one beats another.
‍

For issuers, this reframes the challenge: fees are table stakes, not a differentiator. What wins is being on the front foot when performance surprises, telling a clear story of what a fund is for, and building brand loyalty before an investor ever opens a platform search bar, because once they're comparing funds side-by-side, it's too late to influence the choice.

See our episode with Chris Sullivan from Craft & Capital for more on ETF GTM strategies.

Crypto cools, but education builds loyalty

Bitcoin's rockier run has cooled both price expectations and near-term investment plans, but the core crypto investor base is holding steady. The more interesting shift is with the marginal buyer, some of whom are now exploring high-risk, high-octane prediction markets as a separate outlet, rather than abandoning crypto altogether.
‍

The data also points to education as a genuine competitive advantage: providers who lead on it are also the ones investors rate most highly. Crypto's appeal has never been about superior information; it's about access without gatekeeping, letting investors learn by doing on their own terms. That same appeal now extends to prediction markets, and it's a signal for traditional finance on how to earn trust with newer, younger investors.

Britain's investors need a reason to believe

Only 21% of British investors plan to increase their UK allocation, roughly matched by those planning to decrease it. Among those adding exposure, attractive valuations are the top reason. Among those pulling back, 75% point to a lack of confidence in the UK economy, a macro problem no single platform can solve alone.
‍

There's a parallel opportunity closer to home for issuers and platforms: separate research (Vanguard, The British Money Mindset 2026) found that 82% of people still see saving and investing as fundamentally different activities. Closing that gap, and building genuine trust through UK-focused education, in-person events, and government-backed initiatives, is where the industry can make the most difference.

The bottom line for platforms and issuers

Across every theme, the same pattern holds: content and access alone don't move investors.
‍

Publishing a hub or a report isn't an event; showing up in the conversations, channels, and communities investors already trust is.
‍

Whether the topic is AI, ETFs, derivatives, crypto, or UK equities, the winning move is the same: be present, be responsible, and tell a story investors can believe before they're comparing you to everyone else.

Watch the full episode above for the complete conversation, including more on derivatives, prediction markets, and what Finimize is telling partners to prioritize next quarter.

Episode transcript

Carl: Welcome to a bonus episode of Retail Investors Decoded. Now, it's a special episode because we have just released the Q3 Modern Investor Pulse. That is the survey where we dive into what nearly 3,000 investors all around the world are thinking, feeling, and doing right now.
‍

Great lessons in there, a trove of data, and no one better to get into what that all means for the platforms and the issuers out there than our very own Fraser Munro, our head of partnerships. Welcome.
‍

Fraser: Thanks, Carl. Happy to be back.
‍

Carl: Absolutely. Let's dive right in. I mean, the headline was the AI stat. 41% of people say they are using AI at least weekly to do investment research and get advice. I mean, that's a massive number. A lot's changing in the AI space. What do you make of it all?
‍

Fraser: Yeah, it's interesting 'cause it's almost like there's the sort of two phases to the client, isn't there? There's the first bucket being like, what do people do to get going? And then the other being, what happens once they do, right? And AI seems to play a very different role in each.
‍

I was thinking about this, and this week the analogy for me is like, what is that catalyst that actually gets someone kicked off and going with investing? And it's definitely much less AI and much more what happens down the pub, right? So, that idea of you're going to watch the football or commiserate the football, maybe, and you're having a conversation with a friend. They're telling you, "Oh, you know, 6 months ago I heard about this stock which is actually much more interesting than ChatGPT, and it's actually about GPUs, and I invested in this thing called Nvidia." And that's what they claimed as their big success story, and they made some money in it. It was super easy. They did it on XYZ platform.
‍

And that type of story and conversation, I think, is ultimately still the trigger that gets everyone going, right? So, I think that's one of the very interesting things to think about for the industry: how do you help facilitate more of that type of thing? How do you become part of the conversation? How do you let humans talk to other humans, because that is how you're going to really get people to get started with this thing.
‍

And then on the other side of the coin, obviously, once people have got started, great, they're definitely using AI. The findings, as we saw, is 40-plus percent of people are using it on a weekly basis, but it's thinking about the stuff that they maybe aren't going to get from AI, right? I think that's the job for the industry there. So, it's saying, "Okay, we need to think about some of the context that we can give that any AI may not be able to. How do we tie it to something topical, tie it to something timely, give someone a relevant insight for them that's not just whatever they can get out of a prompt themselves."
‍

Carl: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. So, that stat about getting people started – it's, you know, 40% give or take get started after a conversation with someone they trust, and only 5% get started thanks to AI.
‍

And I think there's a real opportunity. If I'm a platform, if I'm an issuer – we've made so much of a song and dance about democratizing access to investing and finance. And yeah, we've done some of that, but the job is nowhere near done, and actually AI is now encroaching on driving that access.
‍

We've landed on our summits as the most powerful way to facilitate those conversations. We've been doing them for years, and they're getting bigger and better. We'll have 2,000 people in New York City next year versus 200, maybe 300, this year. This thing just gets bigger and bigger. We're holding those conversations. We're almost the town square of those conversations around investing –
‍

Fraser: Mhm.
‍

Carl: – for people who are getting started. If you're in that 40% using AI at least weekly for your investment research, being in that conversation where people are starting or continuing probably helps you when it comes to AI, right?
‍

Now, this isn't our specialist area at all, but everyone and their dog is selling AI optimization services, and it's true to say, at least from what I've seen, that AI loves recency. It loves new information, but if you're in a real conversation, a real-time conversation that is then amplified because it's such a big event and there's tons of coverage of it, your product, your platform gets amplified. You get to be in the AI conversation, but you get to be in the investor's journey in a way that matters, which is in person.
‍

Fraser: Yeah, totally. Also, I think there's an interesting thing that is maybe slightly overhyped about AI when it comes to the space, right? In the sense that information has always been accessible out there. So, that's never really been the massive challenge. Yes, it's easier to access it now with AI, but they could have still got it – this could have gone on Google, they could have gone and found it themselves, etc. The problem is it's made it more accessible, it's quicker, it's easier to access, but the actual trust component is still not necessarily there when you're going to prompt AI. You might use it while you're investing to sort of sense-check things, but we all know there's also that sort of echo chamber – it's your best friend and it tells you you're a genius. There's all of that side to it that we need to bake in as well. And sometimes you need a human to basically tell you you're barking up the wrong tree, or you should think about this in a different way, or give you a more balanced view.
‍

Carl: 100%. He talks about groupthink there. You know, investors love finding opportunities. That's a perfect segue into just the overall optimism of modern investors right now. 70% think markets will be higher in 12 months, which, given the drops we've seen of late, stands to reason. Most investors over the last 6 years who have bought the dip have done well for it.
‍

One of the questions I was asked about this report on CNBC is: what are investors going to do if – when – US–Iran escalates again. And we can just look back to previous reports, and we can look back to previous geopolitical flashpoints across the world. And what they do is take off idiosyncratic single-security risk, whether that's stocks or particular commodities, and they look for baskets, whether that's across ETFs or themes that they think might work – for example, defense, obviously AI. But they stay invested.
‍

And this whole point – it's true, and it's also a truism, and it's also quite cliché to say – time in the market beats timing the market. No one's trying to time the market. Retail investors are not cutting and running.
‍

I think there's a big opportunity here, because if you go a level deeper and you say, "Hey, where do you want to invest, but you're not feeling as confident? Where do you want to learn more?" Right now, it's stocks. We know investors are buying stocks. We know investors right now in heightened geopolitical times are buying ETFs.
‍

Fraser: Mhm.
‍

Carl: There's a huge opportunity for issuers, for asset managers, to get in front of people, tell the story about ETFs that retail investors are A) interested in, B) maybe unaware of, and get those into consideration – because we know people are looking. We know that there are, just to pick a number from memory, 11% of people with more than $200,000 to invest right now – liquid cash, not portfolio, liquid cash. And they're looking for ideas, and stocks is an obvious place, and they're not feeling confident. So you can help be on that journey and think about the lifetime value that comes from being there at the point of need.
‍

Fraser: Totally. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think it's like – not to use a Sheryl Sandberg-ism, but – leaning in now when things are a bit choppier and more volatile, and trying to support them when things are a bit crazier, means you're best positioned to win when they go to deploy that cash you just talked about, right? No one's going to – basically everyone's going to make those decisions while things are tough, and they're going to be making them based on the industry players, the experts, whatever you want to call them. Those people who are showing up and visible when times are not just sunshine and rainbows – those are all the places that you're going to win when it comes to retail loyalty long-term.
‍

Carl: Exactly. And I think another spot in that – it may be moving up the complexity chain slightly – is derivatives, right? So, right behind stocks in areas that people want to learn more about are derivatives. Maybe for people in this market, it's maybe obvious why, given high market valuations – maybe people are looking for ways to hedge, people looking for ways to maximize exposure with limited capital. In some cases, loads of different reasons, but again, big area. It's one where we've seen a lot of interest lately.
‍

Fraser: I think that's one of the more interesting parts of the pulse in general, I always think. We ask, yes, where are you going to invest? And then the follow-up is always, where do you want to invest, but there's a knowledge gap, or you're looking for more insight or support – and we always look at tracking things like derivatives in that space, right? It's a slightly different challenge to maybe why people are looking for more in stocks or ETFs, because I think you look at derivatives as a whole, and they are pretty complex products. They're something that maybe has a bit more of a fear factor around it, a bit more of a risk of kind of blowing up.
‍

But there's a lot more nuance maybe to that than just continuing to deploy into assets they've already invested into, and I think with that complexity comes quite a big opportunity for the industry to say, okay, how do we debunk some of the scariness of this in a responsible way? Yes, there's better access, the products are more available, but ultimately you need to give people real-life examples of ways that people have had success with these products in a responsible way.
‍

Carl: And maybe onto the elephant in the room – crypto, in particular Bitcoin, which hasn't had the smoothest of rides of late. And alongside its price sliding, we've seen the proportion of people who believe its price will be higher in 12 months drop, and the proportion of people who plan to invest in crypto over the next 6 to 12 months drop slightly.
‍

And two things jumped out. One is that those who are holding Bitcoin continue to hunker down, and that's all well and good. Two is – I overlay the data from the Finimize Awards last quarter. Education is a factor that has driven the leading crypto provider, according to Finimize members.
‍

And so I think there's a job to be done, like you said, around ETFs and stocks. When things aren't all going up and to the right, this is the time where education comes in. Content that is relevant, that acknowledges the reality, comes in and actually sets you up to be the provider of choice.
‍

Fraser: Yeah, absolutely. It's an interesting one. I mean, what's your kind of take on it? Because obviously we've seen a couple of quarters now where it appears that the sort of – I don't want to call it hype – but the sort of interest in crypto is maybe going backwards a little bit. Is that transferring from there to AI? What do you think are some of the drivers?
‍

Carl: So, I think, like I said, the core crypto investor is still there.
‍

Fraser: Mhm.
‍

Carl: I think the marginal buyer, I guess, is where the question really lies, because that's what maybe moves the price up or down – marginal buyer or marginal seller. So, on the marginal buyer, in the conversations I've heard from our community, but also in the wider space, later this year is when people are getting starting to think more about the next four-year crypto cycle. At a more macro level, the marginal buyer is perhaps allocating a bit more capital to things like prediction markets.
‍

And by marginal buyer here, I don't mean a crypto-focused investor – I think they're staying the course. But if you think about the perhaps more flighty investor, or somebody who – a lot of investors are using a small proportion of their portfolio to do some really high-risk, high-octane things just to see how it works, to learn by doing – prediction markets are hot, are interesting. There's a ton going on, from prediction markets in financial markets to politics to sport to global weather events, and we've written on that. You name it.
‍

And so I think for people looking for high risk, high octane, that marginal buyer is maybe spending a bit more time in prediction markets. I don't think it's either/or. It seems to be maybe either/or right now, but I think in the fullness of time – people don't sell all their stocks in order to have a position in commodities. People aren't going to sell all their crypto positions in order to have a view or engage in prediction markets.
‍

Fraser: I saw one interesting final point on crypto that I saw, just to sort of support all this – that was interesting. So Vanguard put out some research a couple of weeks ago into kind of British mindset around investing, and what they found is particularly crypto is still the number one product that Gen Z start with. So even ahead of stocks, it's still the kind of gateway drug into investing. So regardless of whether inevitably it goes up and down and optimism changes, it's clearly still a very, very important asset class, particularly for a certain demographic of new investor as well.
‍

Carl: Yeah, look, I'd back Vanguard on that, and to me it's really clear why. Take it outside of investing, right. People go where they are wanted. People go where they are welcomed. They tend to not go where they are shunned.
‍

And – try to put myself in the shoes of Gen Z for a second – for most of Gen Z's lives, [the industry has] shunned them, has said, "You don't have enough money for us." Or, "You want to buy this stock or this fund? Well, read this 20-page risk document first." Or, "You don't know what you're doing – if you want to invest in this thing, sit down with an advisor who's going to talk down to you." The list goes on and on.
‍

Whereas crypto, by and large, says, "You want to transact in this space? Come on in. Learn by doing. We're here with content. We're here with information. We're here to help you if you need it. But you're an adult – go for it, figure it out." And it really just appeals to people's sense of autonomy and agency. Prediction markets, same.
‍

Fraser: And so, yes, TradFi is starting to be a bit more like that, and just allowing people to be a grown-up. And the FCA, to its credit, is changing some rules around risk warnings and things like that, to take away the excuses all of the TradFi folks have used. But unless there's a massive change, and really quickly, marginal changes will be too little too late. If I've been ignored for 5 years by TradFi and then they say, "Hey, come and talk to us now" – why would I do that? I've found my people, so to speak.
‍

Carl: Yeah, interesting. Just to switch gears – one I'm keen to ask you about as well is ETFs. I feel like that's the one we're all constantly talking about. But the thing that slightly surprised me – maybe not surprised me, but that I saw again in the data – is that knowledge gap: ETFs was pretty high in that, right? And you think about the promise of ETFs in some ways is that it's basically the simplest option you can get. It's like, don't bother with stock picking, buy the basket – that's what ETFs are here for. And yet it still scores relatively highly with people who are saying, "I'm kind of struggling to navigate this," or "I need to know more."
‍

What's your take on that? I'm kind of interested to hear whether you think–
‍

Fraser: Yeah, that's interesting that you flagged that. My read on it is people understand the product – I don't think there's any question about that.
‍

Carl: Mhm.
‍

Fraser: But they struggle to understand differentiation.
‍

Carl: Mhm.
‍

Fraser: So, what's the difference between this ETF and that ETF if they're both giving me exposure to China, for instance. And there are more ETFs than there are individual stocks, I think, by some counts – or by just an actual count.
‍

Carl: Mhm.
‍

Fraser: And so, up against that, you're getting more and more complex ETFs. Basic ETFs people get. I think active ETFs need to do a bit of a job to explain themselves, and I think that gets caught up in there. Trusts, funds, whether open-ended or closed-end, get dragged into there and are less well understood. And then you bring in leverage – and again, this came up with CNBC – you've got triple-leveraged ETFs, double-leveraged ETFs on a theme, sure, or on individual underlying securities, packaged almost as an ETF. The proliferation creates complexity, even though the underlying product might be simple.
‍

So, I think there's a lot to do to tell the story of an ETF, explain what it's for. And moreover, explain why this over that. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's cheaper – I think fees are table stakes. It means it does what it says on the tin. Obviously everyone wants good performance, but you can't solve for that. What you can solve for is performance in line with expectations. So how do you do that? You tell a clear story, your communications are good, your content is good. When something surprising happens, whether good or bad, you are on the front foot in front of people.
‍

I used to be an equity research analyst, and it's all well and good when the stock you've got on a buy goes up 10% – do a little bit of a victory lap. The more important work comes when it's down 10%, because then you want to get in front of the people you've told to buy this stock, explain what's gone on, explain if your view has changed, why, or how to think through things.
‍

Carl: Mhm.
‍

Fraser: That's where – frankly, anyone can pick a stock that goes up.
‍

Carl: I totally agree with you. It feels like that knowledge gap with ETFs is really kind of an overwhelm gap, maybe, rather than a knowledge gap, right? They understand, like you said, what the product is, but that doesn't make it easier if there's 25 of the same product, right?
‍

Fraser: It's hard to reflect the loyalty that you've built to your brand through a platform. And what I mean by that is: if I open my investment platform and I type in Vanguard or VanEck, that comes up. But also, partly for regulatory reasons, but also partly because they're not incentivized to, the platform doesn't necessarily say, "Hey, I know that you prefer an iShares product when available. Therefore, when you search for something, I'll show you the iShares product first." And if I'm an iShares stan, but then the Vanguard product comes up first, and – for the reasons we've discussed – it basically does the same thing, I'm not incentivized to do the extra work to look for the brand I want.
‍

Carl: Yeah, I think once someone is shopping and looking on the shelf, so to speak, on one of the platforms, you don't really have a chance to influence them at that point, right? Cuz like you said, maybe best-case scenario, they might stumble across the fund that's yours. They're not going to be able to compare directly on the platform. So, ultimately, it feels like the battleground has to be pre-platform, before they decided to type it in, right? That's where you're going to potentially influence and stay top of mind and showcase who you are and tell your story and do all the things we're talking about – otherwise, it's just a lottery, frankly, when they go to search.
‍

Carl: Fraser, I know you've spent a bunch of time talking to some of the big hitters in the UK government and industry campaign to get Britain investing. We obviously, as part of our Pulse, did a lot of work to understand how British investors were feeling about investing in British assets, and investing overall. Before we get into the detail of what the report showed, it'd be great to hear your perspectives from the conversations you've been having.
‍

Fraser: Yeah, totally. I think it's again sort of – there's two streams to maybe unpack in one here. So, one is: the UK has a huge opportunity, if you look at it in a positive light, to say let's get more savers into investors, right? How do we get more people to sort of debunk, demystify what investing is, and get them started on that journey? So, that's one big bucket that's really interesting, and there's tons of stuff going into that, and we can unpack some of that around catalysts to this and all that stuff.
‍

And then the other is, as a market, what do British investors think of British equities, effectively, right? That's the whole "investing in Britain" question – what are some of the barriers, why are they doing it, or why aren't they doing it. And I think we have some pretty interesting findings across both, which maybe we can unpack a bit more.
‍

Carl: Absolutely. So, I think on British investors and Britain – only 21% (or perhaps only a fifth) of British investors investing in Britain say they plan to increase their allocations to the UK. To be fair, it's roughly equal to those who say they're going to decrease their allocation to the UK. But of those who say they're going to increase their exposure, the biggest reason is valuations being attractive.
‍

I think that's fair – Britain has been cheap for a long time. National buyers have noticed, if you look at the M&A activity. If I then look at the group who are shunning British assets, 75% give or take cite the economy, or a lack of confidence in the economy. I'd almost want to bat this back to government – that's the thing to solve if you want to solve British investors picking the UK.
‍

Fraser: Yeah, totally agree. I think a lot of it comes back to sort of the storytelling, right? How do you better give people reasons to believe that investing and saving are not actually a million miles apart? They should be two sides of the same coin, to a certain degree. To tie this again into the Vanguard research they put out recently – I think something like 82% of people thought that saving and investing were fundamentally completely different activities, right? And that is the battleground we're having here.
‍

So, how do we, as an industry, help people have more conversations, tell more success stories – in a means that says, you know, this person has been able to put down a deposit on a house, or these people have been able to fund their kids through university, or retire, or whatever it might be. Investing is not as scary a premise and concept as it appears from the outside.
‍

Carl: Let me ask you actually one other part about the savers–investor thing that I think is kind of interesting, right? There's obviously – it's great that there are these tailwinds in the UK now, people are pushing to do more of a – there's a government-led initiative to sort of encourage platform providers to put education at the forefront. What's your thoughts on some of the unspoken risks, I suppose, with that? Like, okay, put up an educational hub, and the way that they might approach some of the content space, knowing what you know – you're relatively long in the tooth when it comes to building content in this space.
‍

Fraser: Yeah, I think the single biggest challenge – and there are lots – but the single biggest challenge is an outdated assumption on content, right? Once upon a time, and it's not so long ago that this is an appropriate way to start, the simple fact that a newspaper published a newspaper on a Monday morning was the event, was news.
‍

And I think the risk here is that firms are going to say, "The simple fact that we have published a piece of content, published a hub, is the catalyst that will get people to consume it, right? It's a build-it-and-they-will-come approach." Unfortunately, newspapers and content production is not like a McDonald's, where you build it and people show up. It's more like a tree falling in the woods, and no one's in the woods. Content publishing, hub creation, on its own, is not an event. It may as well never have happened. And it's not because of AI putting slop all over the internet – it's just that people are in channels where they want to consume, and you have to be there.
‍

So, it's a distribution problem on the one hand. It's also an issue of creating an event around the event of having published. So, telling people we have this content, telling people why they should care about this content, telling people how this content's going to help them. And even then, you're asking someone to leave TikTok or leave Twitter to go and do your thing. Best-case scenario, you go to them.
‍

Carl: Fraser, you're obviously talking to all of our key partners regularly, especially when these reports come out. So, as a bit of a teaser, what's the key action, or the most important chart, that you're going to put in front of people and say, "This is what you need to do"?
‍

Fraser: Good question. I think there are a couple of things that I'll be talking to partners about and showcasing. So, the AI story is going to be one of them – what does the world of AI look like for investors? And I think talking them through that whole catalyst to invest – its role is not getting people started, it's part of the journey on an ongoing basis. And I think the implications then for asset managers, banks, and platforms are: what are you doing to support them outside of them doing their stuff with AI, right? So, the stuff we spoke about earlier on, the anti-AI hedge of – get people together, get them in person, go to events, have those conversations, and let them learn by talking and trusting each other. I think that's probably one big takeaway.
‍

I think the other is thinking about those knowledge gaps again. Unpacking a little bit about the top things that we see from our retail investor community that they really want to learn about, but they're not getting the support they need. And that is a whole industry opportunity, right? So, if that's someone in derivatives, great – there's a challenge we can help overcome, and how do we do that in a meaningful and responsible way. When it comes to stocks and ETFs, it's clearly not a complexity problem – it's maybe more of the overwhelm, the storytelling, showcasing why this versus that. So, I think those are probably two of the big ones that I'll be talking to everyone about.
‍

Carl: Thank you very much. A fantastic way to end this bonus episode of Retail Investors Decoded.