Imagine waking up one day and realizing you had a hidden asset — something you could turn into actual cash.
It’s not your house, your car, or a dividend.
But according to The Wall Street Journal, a surprisingly large number of U.S. families have it.
Amazingly, you can turn it into cash more than once. In fact, you can do it every year — like an annual “bonus” payment. It’s easy to do, and it might even increase your hidden asset’s value.
Curious if this asset is hiding in your portfolio right now?
Let’s take a look.
The Magic Kingdom Loses its Magic
To set the stage here, let’s look at something that’s been in the news lately:
An activist investor named Nelson Peltz is angry about the stock performance of Disney (DIS). Disney stock is down about 66% from its 2021 high.
Peltz has been shouting from the rooftops that he can turn things around. But to do so, he’ll need seats on Disney’s corporate board.
Getting seats on the board requires a vote of all Disney shareholders.
For a typical company, most of those shareholders would be big institutions like mutual funds. But Disney isn’t a typical company…
The Power of Individual Investors
As The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, individual investors like you own more than 600 million shares of Disney stock. That’s about one-third of Disney's 1.8 billion shares.
Since each share represents a vote at the annual shareholders meeting, that gives ordinary investors a lot of power.
The thing is, most individual investors don’t vote. According to Broadridge Financial Solutions, only about 30% of shares held by individual investors are used to vote.
As Andrew Shapiro, the managing member of activist fund Lawndale Capital Management, explains, “Many retail investors throw their votes away because they don’t want to read the proxy or because they feel their votes don’t matter.”
But for Nelson Peltz to win his fight, he needs the votes from your shares. In fact, he needs them so much, he’s willing to pay you for them! (Long story, but yes, this is perfectly legal.)
And that’s where the “hidden” asset we mentioned earlier comes back into the picture…
Introducing: Shareholder Vote Exchange
Recently, a new website was created.
It’s called Shareholder Vote Exchange (SVE).
Essentially, SVE helps investors like you generate income from your stocks. The way it does that is by helping you sell your shareholder voting rights.
As noted above, many individual investors never vote their shares. But other investors — for example, Nelson Peltz — may see cash value in these rights, especially if they can be used for something like gaining board seats.
Historically, individuals have never had a place to sell their voting rights. And investors like Peltz have never had a place to buy them.
But with SVE, now they do.
How It Works (It’s Like an Annual Bonus Payment)
With SVE, investors like you use your shares to generate extra income.
Whenever a company whose stock you own holds a shareholders’ meeting, you can sell your votes on SVE. Think of it like an annual bonus payment.
SVE will pool your votes with the votes of other investors. The more votes it can gather, the more valuable each vote becomes. For example, if it could sell Peltz, say, 10% of the total vote, that would be very valuable to him, and he’d likely be willing to pay up for it. But if it could only sell him 1% of the total vote, that would be much less valuable.
So, how much are your votes worth?
Research and real-world data suggest they’re worth an annual yield of anywhere from .1% to more than 5%. A quick example:
SVE recently held a vote auction for the 2023 Annual Meeting of Uranium Energy Corporation (UEC). 2,100 votes were sold for a total of $235. That’s $0.11 per vote. Given that UEC’s stock was trading for $3.29 on the meeting date, that implies a “vote yield” of 3.34%.
Turn Your Hidden Asset into Cash Today
As of late January 2024, about 200,000 proxy votes had been traded on SVE.
But the company’s founder expects volume to grow with the 2024 proxy season.
Eager to put your shares to work so you can turn your hidden asset into cash?
You can learn more on SVE’s website and register for free here »
Happy Investing,
Please note: Crowdability has no relationship with any of the startups or investment platforms we write about. We're an independent provider of education and research on startups and alternative investments.
Best Regards,
Founder
Crowdability.com
