Edge Clear, the futures brokerage built by and for traders, last week announced the demo launch of EdgeProX, a customizable, feature-rich, trading execution, and analytics platform.
As part of the development, Benzinga chatted with Edge Clear founder Morad Askar.
What To Know: Edge Clear isn’t your typical brokerage.
Askar, in the face of a highly successful career in professional trading, founded the company to address common issues like high turnover.
“I’ve had this vision, coming out of my prop shop, to make a global impact,” Askar said on his move to develop educational webinars on futures trading, to raise money for charity. “I came online in 2008 with Twitter and was posting live trades, doing free chats to whoever wanted to listen, and I gathered a following pretty quickly.”
His experience online came with the realization that many traders are simply misguided in their efforts.
“Oftentimes, I found that I would talk to traders and they would tell me one thing, but really they’re doing something else,” Askar noted. “So, a natural evolution was to get involved on the brokerage side, which then would give me the ability to see what those people are doing, and actually learn what the new normal online trader does.”
After procuring the know-how, talent and proper approvals, Edge Clear launched on April 2, 2020.
“We didn’t want to be an April Fool’s joke,” Askar said. “We pushed it to April 2nd and it’s been really intense, since then.”
Core Focus: Edge clear is committed to solving the problems online traders have.
“Traders have to deal with brokers who are natural salespeople,” he noted. “We wanted to attack this, change the industry, and focus on what the trader needs, not how much can I get you to trade, in order to collect commissions.”
According to Askar, traders, especially in the futures and options space, by and large do not understand the concept of margins. What many competing brokers will do is require less margin — collateral on hand — to maintain a levered futures or options position.
At some brokers, margins can be as low as $500 per E-Mini S&P 500 futures contract whose margin, at the exchange level, sits right around $13,500.
“It’s like giving a person a nuclear device and saying: ‘Okay, run, but don’t shake it.’ Eventually, it is going to blow up and that’s where we see a lot of turnovers come from.”
Askar’s been advocating for de-leveraging for quite some time. He was part of the initiative, by CME Group Inc CME, to launch Micros, the smaller-sized versions of contracts like the E-Mini.
“Equities come with a lot of encumbrances like the pattern day trader rule, and the availability to short a stock. In futures, you can go long, short, and we can have an infinite number of contracts. We can do trade a million times and it’s almost a 24 by six market.”
Core Product: The firm offers a plethora of tools for traders to observe, learn, improve, and execute.
“We’ve built EdgeWatch, a tool that gives you the metrics on your trades,” Askar said. “Also, every broker has access to monitor trader risk. When we see somebody acting a bit unusual, like trading a lot more and they’re down on the day, then, to the best of our ability, they get a call, which is not something we’re aware that anybody else does.”
By taking preventative measures, Edge Clear helps prevent customers from damaging their prospects as successful traders.
Adding, through EdgeProX, Edge Clear’s newest execution-focused analytics platform that runs on the Rithmic, CQG, and IQFeed, enables traders, on Windows, macOS, or Linux, the ability to level up their access while lowering costs.
At $34.99 per month, EdgeProX offers Time Price Opportunity (TPO) and Volume Profile charts, Volume Imprint, known as the distribution of volume inside price candles, a Heat Map to visualize market liquidity and increase the preciseness of execution, as well as an advanced DOM and EdgePro Line, an indicator that computes theoretical break-evens in real-time, visually.
Graphic: EdgeProX Heat Map.
The platform was developed by Tony Lindsay, also a trader, in Java, and licensed to Edge Clear.
“Traders have specific needs. They don’t need a minivan and they don’t need a Ferrari. They need something that’s practical and not super expensive.”
“If you were trading for me, and I’m going to put money behind you, I need this thing to really serve you well, in order to see you do well. This is how we are approaching the development and evolution of EdgeProX, and whatever else we do,” Askar said in reference to the platform allowing all traders access to professional tools. “It’s offering the kind of tools you need in order to perform at your peak as a prop trader.”
Graphic: EdgeProX Volume Profile overlay.
Innovation Outlook: Technology innovation and trader development initiatives.
“The first step is to improve the Heat Map and make it more adaptive. Next is to add additional features that allow the trader to extract more information out of the market-by-order feed from Rithmic,” Askar said.
EdgeProX’s reporting features will better allow traders to visually analyze their development and troubleshoot issues in their strategy.
“Our focus is on simplifying access and reducing costs. EdgeProX replaces probably two to three hundred dollars worth of software, per month.”
Adding, Edge Clear is an independent broker. That said, all traders are assigned a personal broker that will follow them through their journey as a trader, regardless of the technology or clearing firm they use.
“There are probably 50 different platforms we have access to and, … the most important part of that is, you get assigned a very well-trained personal broker. You’re not going through a phone system and getting someone at random. There’s someone that knows you and can understand where you’re coming from.”
“The single goal is to keep you trading futures because we have a passion for this industry,” Askar ended.
Risk Disclaimer: Derivatives trading is not suitable for all investors.
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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