General Description

The CMC Markets Driverless Cars Share Basket tracks the performance of an initial 28 shares with exposure to Driverless Cars chosen by the Share Basket Review Panel.

The Share Basket was created with a base level of 4,000 as of 31 December 2019.

Driverless Cars is one of the 16 trending share baskets you can now trade on. Trading share baskets allows you to diversify your risk, so a sharp movement in one company’s share price doesn’t have a disproportionate effect on the overall holding.

Autonomous driving: the greatest trend of the century?

If it were only a matter of screwing the parts together to build self-driving cars, we would live in the future today. Our car would choose the best route for us by communicating with other cars. This would prevent traffic jams, and fatigue would no longer be dangerous. Unfortunately, however, it's not that simple: the parts must also be able to work together reliably.

Why trade on self-driving automobiles?

There are a number of factors – both positive and negative – which could impact the future of this industry and therefore its attractiveness as an investment.

THE BULLISH STANCE

• Autonomous driving could be one of the biggest upheavals in society and investors could benefit if they choose the right companies
• Human errors are excluded and driving can therefore be far safer worldwide than it is today
• More free time: when travelling in the car it will be possible to concentrate on other things, which could increase productivity on the commute to work
• As computers have no emotions, aggressive driving – and road rage – would become a thing of the past
• Driving having consumed excess alcohol will cease to be an issue
• The police can focus on more important tasks if they are spending less time overseeing traffic issues and accidents.

THE BEARISH VIEW

• Vehicles could be manipulated by hackers, which may lead to security problems
• Jobs for taxi and freight drivers will be eliminated
• People would forget how to drive vehicles
• Companies would need to insure themselves against deaths caused by incorrectly functioning autonomous driving systems
• In very bad weather, the systems could work less reliably
• Street signs will have to change, and this will consume large sums of investment