eToro has launched its latest portfolio which offers retail clients the chance to invest in the technological development of drones and their use cases in a time when the drone market is expected to be worth $100 billion by 2020, driven predominantly by commercial and civil government sectors.
The drones portfolio is the latest in eToro’s expanding list of thematic investment products. The firm has recently launched portfolios covering thematics such as payments, renewable energy, big tech, cryptoassets, gaming companies, banks, genome engineering and the cannabis industry. In July 2019, eToro launched a portfolio that exposes traders to Facebook’s Libra project. Comprising of the 13 publicly-traded companies involved in the Libra Association, the portfolio is comprised of stocks in Mastercard (MA); Paypal (PYPL); VISA (V); Booking Holdings INC (BKNG); eBay (EBAY); Lyft (LYFT); MercadoLibre (MELI); Spotify (SPOT); Uber (UBER); Facebook (FB); Iliad (ILD.PA); Vodafone (VOD) and Farfetch (FTCH). These companies span the financial services and retail industry and include payment systems and technology giants. Facebook hopes to have recruited over 100 firms into the Libra Association before the launch in early 2020.
Yoni Assia, CEO and Co-founder of eToro, commented: “This fast growing sector has already provided solutions for so many industries and it’s exciting to see how and where the technology will be used next. By offering our drones portfolio to retail investors, they can also benefit from these technological developments by investing in the companies involved in drone building, equipment manufacturing and service innovation. We’re giving retail investors choice. They can either invest in particular companies looking at drone technology or in the eToro Drone CopyPortfolio, which enables people to diversify their risk by having a stake in a multitude of companies across the drone industry value chain.”
Drones were originally developed for use in the military industry, but private companies and individuals have increasingly found commercial ways to employ drone technology from image mapping to delivery services. The investment portfolio eToro launched provides its clients exposure to 37 leading companies, including Aerovironment, Parrot SA Boeing, Amazon, Airbus Group and General Electric with equal weighting across each stock. The portfolio reflects operations and services across the value chain which drone technology is employed within.
“People like to invest in what they know and this is clearly an exciting sector that people are following. The way people choose to invest is changing. Instead of just researching particular companies, they want to invest in a theme, idea or technology and our CopyPortfolios make it easy for ordinary investors to access thematic investing”, Yoni Assia added.
