Trade Ideas
Driving Trade and Investment with the AI Engine

The only source of knowledge is experience”–this famous saying by Albert Einstein succinctly abridges the inception story of Trade Ideas. Back in the day, the founders–Daniel Mirkin and others—used to work for a venture capital financed firm, to bring direct access trading technology to hedge fund managers. What was thought to help nurture and promote growth of business, the venture firm taught them exactly what not to do. In Mirkin’s words, the tune to 50-million-dollar education! In the process, Mirkin and team learned that access to high-touch information in investing and trading is the key component to succeed. Hence, to be at the cutting-edge of tracking every stock in the market and notifying customers about profitable activity, Trade Ideas software was developed in 2002–the landmark that decided the difference between success and failure.

Fast forward to 2020, Trade Ideas caters to investors, traders, and market professionals in over 65 countries. Backed by a team of proficient trading experts, Trade Ideas has fully automated trading available through Interactive Brokers with several more brokers to be announced soon. With leading online brokerages licensing the company’s proprietary technology, Trade Ideas is creating quite a stir in the trading and investing domain.

So far, it has been an exciting ride for Mirkin and his team. Witnessing the staggering growth despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, the company is all set to create a benchmark with its real-time search engine across the globe. In an exclusive interview with CIO Applications, Mirkin, CEO and Senior Managing Partner at Trade Ideas shared his insights on the company’s proprietary solution, demystified the myths in the trading paradigm, and highlighted how the company is tackling the challenges during the global pandemic, and much more.

How is Trade Ideas adapting to this new normal posed by COVID-19?

Since 2003, we all have worked from home at some point in time. In that aspect, nothing much had to be changed to get acclimatized to what is going on. We already have employees from different states and disparate time-zones, who are streamlining our business.

Given the current situation we are dealing with, what are the pain points that you hear from your clients?

Although most businesses are facing the heat of the coronavirus, surprisingly, the stock market is noticing an increase in the number of participants. This is not what was expected. More individual members today want to know about the intricacies of the stock market. It is turning out to be an eye-opener for them. People are unlearning the suggestions given by investors for all these years. Hiding the real processes of the stock market, most investors advised customers to provide money to the managers, who then charged a fee. Individual participants today want to learn the real structure of the stock market.

How does Trade Ideas help the customers overcome these challenges?

We are changing the entire misconception of how stock market trading and investing is done. We are bridging the gap in the way individuals can utilize amazing server-based technology to make informed, smarter market decisions.

At Trade Ideas, we leverage the power of AI that provides education, practice, and support to the next generation of individuals on how to perceive and utilize financial data. Precisely, we groom them to become successful self-directed investors.

Considering the competition in the stock market realm, what you think are the differentiating factors that steer Trade Ideas ahead of the competition?

The key is our back-end process. The fact that we take every stock in real-time database, every single time frame in our in-built systems, gives us a heads-up about the ongoing processes. What helps us thwart the competition is our real-time search, which is one of the reasons why eventually, our technology will be taken out of finance and used in the military, law enforcement, and medical trials.

Could you elaborate on the kind of solutions that you have in place and how exactly they benefit your clients?

Let’s draw an analogy to understand better how our solutions function. Say, you want to begin your workout. While one can always do it at home, most people prefer to hire a trainer. The reason people opt for trainers is that they pay them in exchange for discipline–the trainer puts them through the right exercises, repetitions, and diet chart. Hence, the results are better than when done at home.

Similarly, when you trade with our AI, it’s like working out with a trainer. We are that ‘trainer.’ We put in our 17 years of technological and trading expertise to teach people risk management through productive streams. With us, one can see how PML is affected by various movements, percentages, point moves, and others. The best part is, you can interact with the AI in a simulated model. We are putting the complete vertical together where you see the market data, the suggestions of what to do with the data, and then follow those suggestions without losing your capital. Also, we continuously keep track of the results. So, while you’re learning, you’re not losing actual money. It’s a comprehensive, new approach to interacting with the stock market.

How does the client onboarding process look like in Trade Ideas?

At Trade Ideas, we offer a one-on-one Zoom meeting for client onboarding. We have a portfolio of educational materials to allow the clients to experience every aspect of the technology in video format or tutorial format. We have a full education suite that does the job of onboarding. The software helps us to adapt to the pattern of education preferred–can be a classroom setting, a video library, and more. Trade Ideas allows people to work at just the surface level following the AI and to get better. The in-depth software can help people dive in and create their own analytics, which then can interact with the AI and customize the experience; it’s almost like creating your own DNA or footprint.

Please share a customer success story wherein a client approached you with a challenge and how you helped them.

I have customer experience as well as institutional experience to share, as both clients are in the trade right now with licenses for our technology until the end of 2020. On the institutional level, a company may come to us and ask to limit access to their data. We provide them with a customization ability where we can limit the information so that their clients only get the data that the institution wants them to see. In terms of our individual customers, there are two parts. One is making sure that the customers understand the processes involved. A lot of times, the semantics or the language is a little different. It’s a filter, but it does the same thing as an indicator. It involves communicating with our customers and making sure that they are just aware of everything that is going on. We have got a pipeline probably three years out in terms of product development. The other way that we serve as both clients in terms of helping them answer the question or solving their problems is that we innovate faster than everybody else. Our innovation cycle is so fast that we would make other technology companies spin. There are no quarterly upgrades. We update every day. We are always moving the ball forward in terms of innovation and what we’re trying to showcase to our customers.

Moving ahead, what are the plans that you envision for Trade Ideas?

We are planning to bring gamification to our solutions. We want to create an environment where people can practice trade, and at the same time, win prizes. We want people to practice with real stock market data, learning how to invest appropriately and potentially making money in the competition.