The Risk of Online Share Trading

Online share trading poses many risks to the investors, particularly on platforms with non-existent or rudimentary security systems. One suspects thatthere are plenty around in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.

Occasionally "testing the system" in order to ensure security is not sufficient to give 'bankable' assurance, and so does not give comfort to the savvy investor. From the start, Online Share Trading services are typically fully covered, through carefully worded disclaimers in small-print, against litigation by their client-investors who may be hit by fraudsters. No one will fully compensate the investor who loses assets through online fraud undetected in time by otherwise aggressive service providers.

One way to eliminate this risk is to stay out of online trading completely. Another, for the more tech savvy operating in vulnerable/hackable environments, would be for service providers to offer the opportunity to buy, but not to sell, shares online. Who would want to buy shares for me, secretly? There is no palpable danger there. But a byzantine underworld of hackers may easily plot and remotely execute fraudulent "sell" orders using stolen email and share-account passwords, accompanied by illegal and lightning (and irrecoverable) transfers of funds out of investors' accounts.

It seems to me that the safest sell orders will always require long paper-trails.