Should You Invest In Meta And The Metaverse?

Should I invest in the stock market?

Before we even discuss whether you should invest in Meta and the Metaverse, I guess the first obvious question that comes to mind is whether you should invest in stocks at all? If you are wondering whether you should invest in stocks, then my answer is a resounding yes. Without going into detail of the benefits of investing in stocks, just ask yourself the question “How much interest do you gain on your money sitting in the bank?” When you make the sums I am sure you will come to the conclusion that the interest your money will earn in the bank will not even help you stay above the cost of inflation.

But is it not risky to invest in stocks, I hear you say? Well, the counter question may be: “Is it not perhaps risky to not invest in stocks, considering that your money will hardly earn any noteworthy interest by simply sitting in the bank? The idea is of course not to invest all of your bread money in stocks but to consider the investment in stocks like you would consider a savings account. On top of that you are of course not going to treat the stock market like the wild west, but of course you will be doing proper research to ensure you make informed decisions in regards to your investments.

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What led to my interest in the stock market?

Just like many, and possibly you too, I was sitting on the sideline thinking that stocks are way too risky and it is only for those that have so much money on hand that they can afford to lose a lot of money, in what I perceived to be a gamble.

This perception very quickly changed for me when a close friend of mine told me that he only started investing in stocks when the pandemic started and he was absolutely shocked at how much money stocks made him and very quickly too. He told me if you want to make money fast, then the stock market is the place to do that, but as a disclosure he did warn me that at the same time it is of course possible to lose money on the stock market too if you don’t do your research well before investing.

He send me screenshots as proof. He made a sweet £30 000 pounds on Tesla stock and immediately invested that £30 000 in property, putting that money down as a deposit on a newly built flat, which he now rents out on a monthly basis for a pretty penny. Not long after that he made another £40 000 on Apple stocks. You will remember the announcement of the electric Apple car. This announcement made the Apple stock price soar, especially when electronics companies and car manufacturing companies started showing interest in backing the Apple car project.

These are by no means the only investments that made him money during the pandemic and needless to say, he made so much money on the stock market in such a small space of time, that he decided to take a year off from work to travel the world.

However, one question that I did have for him: “Was all of this possible simply due to the volatility of the stock market due to the pandemic? In other words is this window of opportunity gone now that the pandemic is starting to die down?” His response was that he does think that the pandemic played a big role in being able to generate money quickly on the stock market in a short space of time as under normal circumstances you usually need to think more long term when it comes to investing. However, if you keep your eyes open, there will always be great opportunities out there and this is what now leads me to talk to you about Meta and the Metaverse.

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What is the Metaverse and should I invest in it?

Think of the Metaverse as a virtual world. It could possibly be described as a place that you can visit via smart glasses or VR headsets where you find yourself in a computer generated world, whether it be on the beach, you partying with your friends in a mansion, you running around with wild animals in the forest or simply visiting your office. The possibilities here are only limited to your imagination.

There are many different virtual worlds, which includes a carbon copy of earth in the virtual space. This started a new craze where people buy property on earth (but in the virtual space) for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.

You probably heard of NFTs by now that took the world by storm where basic simple jpeg images turned into NFTs sold for millions of dollars. It is crazy, right? I know, and I myself still do not grasp this crazy phenomenon. Who in their right mind will pay millions of dollars for a stupid image? Yet, this is happening all the time. Someone explained that it is not about the NFT images itself, but it is about the concept of the new NFT technology behind it that will apparently revolutionise the verification of digital ownership in the future and will revolutionise the way that online business will be conducted in future. As NFTs are a means to own digital property, NFTs are seen as part of this imaginary world, called the Metaverse.

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Now although all this sounds way too weird to me and not something that interests me at all, it seems inevitable that the Metaverse will become of massive interest to many and for this reason many companies are already preparing themselves for the big boom and has already invested millions if not billions of dollars in Metaverse and Metaverse technology.

One of these companies as you would know is Meta, which used to be Facebook. They even changed their name to Meta and invested billions of dollars already in preparing themselves for the Metaverse. For someone like Mark Zuckerberg to put his massive company Facebook, that includes Instagram and Whatsapp, at risk like this by betting on the success of the Metaverse, is absolutely huge.

Forbes magazine wrote this article: “Why You Absolutely Must Invest In The Metaverse” and this was written on the 14th of November 2021. At this point in time Meta stocks was selling at a whopping $341 per stock. Fast forward to the 3rd of February 2022 Meta experienced a massive collapse in their stock price. The stock price plummeted overnight to $237 per stock and we will look at some of those reasons in a moment. In fact, the war in Ukraine caused Meta stocks to drop even more, to an amount as low as $184 per stock. The crash in FB stock has been accompanied by an increased Google search for ‘buy Meta stock’, found to have proliferated by 3000% in the UK alone on Thursday the 10th of February 2022. Fast forward to the 10th of March 2022 Forbes magazine is now singing a different tune with this article: “Interest In NFTs And The Metaverse Is Falling Fast” Saying this, we cannot only go on what Forbes says, I am sure there are many articles out there that will have a different opinion.

This now leads us to our question. Now that the stocks of Meta dropped like a rock, is it not now the right time to invest? Also, is the decline in interest in the Metaverse and NFTs (taken with a pinch of salt) just temporary, due to the Metaverse at this point in time being more a concept than reality?

What caused Meta stocks to drop like a rock?

1. Apple Privacy Laws provides users of Apple’s ecosystem with much more control over how they would like their data to be shared with third-party organisations like Meta. Evidently, many seemingly decided to opt-out and this had an adverse affect on the reach and effectiveness of Meta ads.

2. European data regulations that prevent Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, from transferring, storing and processing Europeans’ data on US-based servers. It did not help Meta announcing that they may shut Meta services down in Europe, if Europe does not come up with a better workable solution.

3. The primary cause of the Meta stock crash was due to investor disappointment in Meta’s pessimistic forecast for the next quarter. Meta told shareholders it expects to grow revenue between 3% and 11% in the first quarter of 2022. To put that growth rate into context, Meta has not had one year in the last decade where it grew revenue less than 20%.

4. War in Ukraine leading to Meta shutting down their services in Russia.

What do top investors on eToro say about Meta?

Although there are several options when it comes to choosing a reliable investing platform, eToro is certainly an investing platform with a difference. eToro is quite unique in the sense that it allows you to copy trades from other investors and it is also one of the few popular trading platforms that entitles you to trade stocks and cryptocurrency. Most other investing platforms either only trade in stocks or trades in cryptocurrency.

What I also like about eToro is the trust factor due to their branding that simply appears everywhere, whether on television, at international sporting events or their advertising campaigns on bill boards all around the city.

Did I personally invest in Meta and the Metaverse?

I did not go crazy at all, but I did invest some money in Meta when they tanked on the 3rd of February 2022 by around 26%. I picked up Meta stocks at a price point of $237 per stock. As you can see right now, the price point is now only $187, so I can kick myself for not waiting a little bit longer, but that is just the thing about stocks, you cannot 100% predict what will happen in the future. Who would have thought that the war in Ukraine would happen and that the war would have a negative impact on Meta.

However, considering the price was around $340 per Meta stock before it tanked, I still think that I bought Meta stock at a very good price. If the Metaverse kicks off in a massive way in the future then the Meta stock price may possibly skyrocket and those that invested in Meta when it was cheap, will then laugh all the way to the bank. If the Metaverse will kick off in a massive way, is yet to be seen, but there are very good signs with big companies like Meta that already invested billions in the Metaverse. People already paying crazy amounts of money for NFTs and virtual land is also an indication to me that the Metaverse may just become the next big craze that you would not want to miss from an investment perspective.

Other investment opportunities in the Metaverse?

I personally think that Nvidia is a great company to invest in as they are responsible for the creation of computer chips which includes GPU deep learning that ignited AI – the next era of computing – with the GPU acting as the brain of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can perceive and understand the world. The explosion of the Metaverse and the development of virtual reality and AI is simply going to accelerate the need of the existence of companies like Nvidia.

You would have noticed earlier in this article I shared videos on Earth 2.0. This virtual earth is built with the aid of the technology offered by the company Unity. If Earth 2.0 is going to become big, that will certainly lead to the skyrocketing of the Unity stock price. So I think Unity stocks may possibly be another great investment.

This is certainly not an extensive list and as a disclaimer, I am certainly not a professional stock broker, so this is certainly not financial advice, but simply my personal point of view.

Conclusion:

So is it a good idea to invest in Meta and the Metaverse? That question is now a question for you to answer. I have hopefully given you quite some food for thought to now come to your own conclusion in this regard. In general do I think you should invest in the stock market? On this question I will answer a resounding YES. However, this is once again just my own personal opinion and whether to do so or not needs to be an informed decision based on sound research.

Your Opinion?

I am curious about your opinion. Do you think I made a mistake to invest in Meta? Will you invest in Meta? Do you think it is a good idea to invest in the Metaverse in general? What do you think about my suggestions to consider Nvidia and Unity as possible investments? What do you think are good investments right now? Please feel free to share your comments and opinions below.

Disclaimer:

Please note that I am not a professional broker and the opinions and suggestions in this article are my own personal opinions. Also note that although investing in the stock market can make you a lot of money, you also have the potential to lose a lot of money in the stock market if your investment decisions are not based on sound research.