The price of speculation: fintech risk regimes in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

In what ways do fintech (financial technology) innovations mediate and articulate heterogenous facets of uncertainty in the context of finance capitalism? Arguing that uncertainty is a resource both produced and exploited, this article analyses how fintech trading applications configure market uncertainty as figures and scenarios of risk and opportunity. Moreover, foregrounding the experiences of novice retail traders, I analyse the weighing of financial risk against extra-financial forms of uncertainty, namely historical contingency, lived precarity, and infrastructural opacity. To map articulations between the various facets of uncertainty involved (i.e. risk, contingency, precarity, and opacity), I propose the concept of risk regimes: sociotechnical constellations or assemblages that interweave technologies of financial calculation and prediction; discourses of probability, possibility, risk, reward, et cetera; technologies of the self; and infrastructures of datafication key to fintech. This study is set in Hong Kong, a context that testifies to the instability of such assemblages. Whereas finance capitalism exploits uncertainty in multiple ways, contingency can also render the future of finance capitalism itself uncertain. Conceptually, I draw on recent media theories, theories of uncertainty and prediction as well as theories of value. Methodologically, I combine app analysis, in-depth user interviews, and digital-methods experimentation.

KEYWORDS:

• Fintech
• uncertainty
• finance capitalism
• risk
• retail trading apps
• Hong Kong

Acknowledgements

I would like to sincerely thank all the interviewees who shared their stories, research assistants Kelvin Ka Wai Wu and Isaiah Yee Lok Hui, and the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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2 https://www.aqumon.com/en/learn/how-we-invest. Last accessed on 10 November 2021.

3 https://www.aqumon.com/en/blog/8/democratising-investment-with-robo-advisor/. Last accessed on 10 November 2021.

4 https://www.aqumon.com/en/blog/8/democratising-investment-with-robo-advisor/. Last accessed on 10 November 2021.

5 Ethical approval via The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

6 https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/insights/2021/02/pulse-of-fintech-h2-20-data-management.html. Last accessed on 10 November 2021.

7 https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/insights/2021/02/pulse-of-fintech-h2-20-data-management.html. Last accessed on 10 November 2021.

8 http://www.etnet.com.hk/www/tc/news/topic_news_detail.php?category=interview&newsid=11886. Last accessed on 10 November 2021.

9 http://paper.wenweipo.com/2017/11/08/MC1711080003.htm. Last accessed on 10 November 2021.

10 https://news.fx168.com/qiye/1901/2899153.shtml. Last accessed on 4 April 2020.

11 Personal interview, 18 January 2020, Hong Kong. All names of interviewees are pseudonyms.

12 Personal interview, 25 July 2020, Hong Kong.

13 Personal interviews 4 and 8 July 2020.

14 Personal interview 8 July 2020.

15 Personal interview 11 September 2020.

16 Personal interview 11 September 2020.

17 Personal interview 2 August 2020.

18 Personal interview 2 August 2020.

19 Personal interview 31 October 2019.

20 https://www.marketing-interactive.com/omakase-creates-futu-securities-campaign-for-hong-kong-and-reveals-expansion-plans. Last accessed on 10 November 2021.

21 Personal interview 9 July 2020.

22 Personal interview 4 July 2020.

23 Personal interview 2 August 2020.

24 https://www.aqumon.com/en/blog/835/aqumons-client-story-from-day-trader-to-long-term-investor/?qd=Facebook. Last accessed on 10 November 2021.

25 Personal interview 11 September 2020.

26 Personal interview 9 July 2020.

27 https://www.aqumon.com/en/blog/847/what-are-reits-and-how-to-invest-in-them/. Last accessed on 10 November 2021.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee [23601417], Hong Kong SAR.

Notes on contributors

Rolien Hoyng

Rolien Hoyng is Assistant Professor in Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Recent work includes a special issue ‘Digital infrastructure, liminality and world-making via Asia’ (International Journal of Communication) and an edited book Critiquing Communication innovation: New media in a multipolar world (with G.L.P Chong, MSU Press).