Jamaican investors are being encouraged to become global investors by taking advantage of a robust United States stock market in areas such as e-commerce and cloud computing, despite the economic decline brought on by the pandemic.

Rezworth Burchenson, CEO, Victoria Mutual Wealth Management Limited, says the company has partnered with Interactive Brokers (IB), a leading online trading platform, which allows direct global access to US equities. He noted that despite the impact of the pandemic, many sectors in the US economy have continued to perform well and offer meaningful investment opportunities for local investors.

“With the decline that took place in 2020 in the local stock market, the US market continued to perform very well, in ecommerce, cloud computing, electronic vehicles and others. Why should Jamaican investors not avail themselves of that opportunity?” he said, addressing a recent investor briefing.

The S&P 500, a stock market index that measures the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States, gained more than 16 per cent in 2020. The Dow Jones industrial average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 7.25 per cent and 43.6 per cent, respectively. The Dow and S&P 500 finished at record levels despite the public health and economic crises.

Last year also saw popular companies such as Google, Facebook, Zoom and Apple, performing exceptionally well. Companies such as Airbnb, DoorDash and Wish also successfully raised capital via IPO to advance their businesses throughout the year.

Persons interested in purchasing US equities will be onboarded to the IB platform by a VM Wealth Management client relation officer, where they will be provided with a link and login information to then commence funding their accounts and independently trading in shares.

The public can invest a minimum of US$2,000 using the platform.

Interactive Brokers is a US entity that has been in operation since 1977 and has offered US equities and trading platform solutions since 1995.