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TradeZero CEO talks EV space, why retail trading 'is here to stay,' crypto, and more

TradeZero Co-Founder & CEO Dan Pipitone joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the market outlook heading into 2022 and where he sees opportunity amid current trends.

Video Transcript

- --is Dan Pipitone, the TradeZero co-founder and CEO. Dan, thank you for joining us here today. So we were just listening-- Happy New Year to you. So you're just listening to me say that I'm seeing a little bit more risk taking in the market than we've seen over the past few days in certain names. But we are in the midst of a seven day rally, where we've been seeing record highs for the S&P 500, for the Dow. What are you making of this? Does a Santa Claus rally mean anything or are we just looking ahead to next year?

DAN PIPITONE: I think we're looking ahead. Although it's nice to be in the seat for the last few days where everyone's in a fairly good mood. The markets are behaving nicely. And the Santa Claus rally is underway. It's interesting that as we hit records in the S&P, NASDAQ, and the Dow, they're also hitting record high you know COVID positivity rates with this Omicron variant.

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And so the impacts of that, you know, aren't anywhere near what we saw for other variants in the past. But I think for a few reasons. One, obviously we're seeing we're not seeing the hospitalizations. Number two, as we look into 2022, lots of green shoots as it relates to COVID treatments, the Merc pill on its, way, the Pfizer pill was just approved to mitigate serious illness and hospitalizations.

And so the general theme of viruses as the pandemic like viruses, the more that they are, the more that they perpetuate, the weaker they become. And so hopefully we are following that trajectory. And we'll be positioned nicely for next year.

- And I want to direct everybody's attention to the YFi Interactive, where I have our electric vehicles, our EV heat map. And a lot of green, a lot of dark green. Haven't really seen this in some time either. I know you're writing about or that you have some notes about the EV space here. Just going into 2022, how are you viewing this space and the attendant federal regulations that are coming down the pike?

DAN PIPITONE: Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. Tesla has know has a huge head start, not only from a market share standpoint, but also from an infrastructure standpoint. I am a Tesla owner. I love my car. But trying to find charging stations here in New York City is somewhat of a challenge.

And most of us here in New York City don't have garages. So we're parking in the street and so charging your car is a challenge. So with this new infrastructure bill, the one that actually got passed, we are looking at a 5x coming into next year on electric charging infrastructure. We've heard a lot of car companies make commitments in terms of the levels of electrification that they're going to be going through, moving away from combustion into electric.

But all of these things need to be powered. Tesla we see the Tesla charging stations are there. But we have Lucid here in the state. You have GM making commitments, Ford, et cetera. So really in the EV infrastructure, the go EVs of the world, the BLNKs of the world, we think that those, the EV infrastructure companies are going to do really well on into next year.

- And we're going to move on to another class of securities that is also jumping today, kind of bucking the month's trend. I have it on the YFi Interactive. That would be meme stocks. And by the way, thank you for covering all of these groups that happen to be performing well in synchrony today.

So we're seeing a lot of green and dark green on the screen. We changed it to a month to date to see what's been happening in December. And a lot of these names have been falling off a cliff. And I mean I can sort by performance. We got too many here to go through. I'm just wondering what you're making of the meme stock phenomenon, the rise of the retail's trader that we saw in 2021. Does it continue into 2022 in any meaningful way?

DAN PIPITONE: I do think it continues. I think that retail is kind here to stay. You 10 years ago, 11 years ago, a retail trading made up about 10% of the market volumes. Fast forward to today it's almost 25%. Where we have institutions, you trying to figure out what the next retail meme stock is, retail was traditionally and historically sort of the last folks to know about what was going to be next.

So much so that you'd actually kind of want to do the opposite of what traditional retail was doing. Where today, that's kind of been turned on its ear. And a lot of institutions are trying to figure out what the next meme stock is going to be, where the retail action is going to be placed. And so I think that for coming into next year, we've seen you know this whole meme phenomenon starting really at the end of last year. It's kind of cooled off a bit in the last quarter.

Although you have certain days where a certain stock like Macy's or Robinhood for example will come into vogue and for no reason whatsoever it will just know it'll just skyrocket. I think that into next year, retail kind of leading the charge. I think crypto is going to be the area where we see a lot more movement, a lot more adoption. And again a lot more retail kind of leading the charge into a new asset class, that retail by the way, was one of the earliest adopters of.

- Right. Well, and Yahoo Finance is very much a retail oriented platform. I'm just wondering how your notes compare with mine. Because this year we saw at the beginning of the year and also last year, huge rise in crypto interests. Of course, the prizes the prices of crypto were rising at the same time.

But it's had some sticking power. And we saw a tremendous interest in female users rise as well. I'm just wondering what you found in your platform.

DAN PIPITONE: We've seen this sort of-- crypto sort of like know is a real great way of entering the market. And while we're not yet offering crypto, we're planning to release that next month actually. But we're seeing it as a way where crypto is an asset class that's just kind of listening to the groundswell of people who are adopting.

It's for everyone. You know equities and options, you know historically speaking for many folks kind of left them scratching their heads. Like wait, this is not really for me. This is not approachable. There's so many rules. Wall Street, it's so big. Where crypto I feel has been a product and an asset class that has helped fuel the rise of the retail trader by democratizing finance. We hear this word a lot.

But I think crypto is really kind of leveled the playing field because of the fact that folks really feel that it's approachable, that it's for them. And because they've had friends that have actually made money or they've made some money themselves just by dabbling. And so I think with things like the Metaverse and NFTs, I mean the crypto as an asset class and as a factor in the way in which we transact as people, I think is not only here to stay, but I think it's going to become more ubiquitous as we move on into time.

- I got to agree. I think crypto is for everybody. My parents have yet to agree with me, but I'm working on them.

DAN PIPITONE: Well, they're the next demo that we need to bring into the fold. But I think to your point, to my point, that the crypto is that asset in that vehicle that could do that.

- All right we're going to have to have you back when you get your crypto platform up and running. Dan Pipitone, TradeZero co-founder and CEO. Thank you for joining us.