'Sophisticated, But Intuitive': Stake Enhances Trade App, Sees Increased Volumes

Alongside the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, investors sheltered at home searched for ways to maintain engagement with the outside world, thus fueling a massive rise in retail trading activity.

In light of the increased trading activity, the commission-free trading platform Stake saw a 333% increase in customer acquisition and a fourfold jump in trading volume. As part of the development, Global Head of Marketing at Stake, Bryan Wilmot, alongside product developer Andrew Vassili spoke with Benzinga regarding Stake’s commitment to enriching user experience and disrupting the financial services space.

About Stake: Stake is a zero commission fractional trading application that allows users in the U.K., New Zealand and Australia access to U.S. markets. Stake emerged after the firm’s founder, Matt Leibowitz, sought a better way to invest in the immense innovation, diversity of companies, and advanced liquidity available in the U.S.

The firm’s core offering includes:

• Zero-fee instant trades
• Real-time market data
• Custom orders types

In diversifying its functionality across different account types and investing needs, Stake offers Starter, Unlimited, and Black subscription brokerage packs, increasing the depth and breadth of tools available for investors to make more informed quality decisions.

Robust Trading Products: With a team of derivatives traders, data scientists, and engineers, Stake has been hard at work expanding its full suite of instruments and adding to the sophistication of tools.

“We announced a change to our tiering system at the beginning of January,” said Wilmot. “As you step up through the packs, you access advance order types, things like Good Till Cancel, and trading on unsettled funds.”

The team’s core focus recently has been around providing investors with actionable intelligence via additions such as analyst ratings, dividend calendars, scanners, and media content.

“The integration of analyst ratings essentially provides the customer a lot more information, so they can make better decisions when looking to buy and sell,” said Vassili. “We’re using different venues to inform the customer, obviously, we’ve got different outlets -- social media -- and a weekly article that comes out called The Wrap.”

Next Steps: “We ultimately want to be a sophisticated, but intuitive platform to trade the U.S. stock market,” said Wilmot.

The firm expanded its product offering to the U.K. market and will soon do the same in Brazil, staying true to its vision of opening up the U.S. market to the world.

To learn more about financial wellness with Stake, click here.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels.