TradeZero CEO Daniel Pipitone: Giving Retail Traders An Institutional-Level Toolbox

TradeZero CEO and co-founder Daniel Pipitone is a serial entrepreneur who started his career at Real-Time Quotes — one of the first publishers of Level 2 market data over the internet.

In 1999, Pipitone co-founded Nobletrading.com. Upon its acquisition in 2010, he co-founded market data vendor TurnKey Brokerage Solutions, where he remains as a vice president of operations.

Pipitone is also involved in real estate deals. In 2017, he co-founded Boomerang Development Group with a goal of sourcing new residential development opportunities in his native New York City.

As a digital trading pioneer, Pipitone will be a valuable presence at the upcoming Benzinga's Fintech Deal Day event. He will join the discussion titled "From Trading Floors to Digital Screens: The Transformation of Trading."

Speaking about the beginnings of TradeZero, Pipitone noted that they were the pioneers of this business model.

"In 2013, we launched the first iteration of TradeZero, based in the Cayman Islands and offering commission-free trading to the U.S. markets for retail investors," he said earlier this year.

Since then, TradeZero has come far with its products, offering various platform solutions, order types, and full data feeds – particularly catering to the intense needs of active day traders.

The platform is suited for short selling — profiting when asset prices fall. It has won the Benzinga Global Fintech Award for Best Brokerage for Short Selling in 2020 and 2021.

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Pipitone didn’t originally aim for this specialization.

"The whole treatment that we have about short selling really came out the clearing firm that we’re using at the time," he noted, referring to multiple issues they faced with share borrowing, which is an essential factor behind short-selling.

With his team, Pipitone introduced some innovative functions, most notably the sell-back feature. Essentially, when traders borrow stocks to sell, they have to pay locate fees for any hard-to-borrow shares before selling them short. These costs can be quite steep for less popular and less liquid stocks.

By having a sell-back feature, TradeZero allows them to receive credit for those shares and just pass them to someone else.

"What we’re trying to do as a company is trying to facilitate some of the abilities that high net worth individuals and institutions have and provide those to our customers," Pipitone said, noting that he gets some of the best ideas by talking to his customers, and visiting industry-related events.

Visit Benzinga's Fintech Deal Day & Awards event to connect with Pipitone and other high-profile fintech professionals. Join Benzinga's Future of Digital Assets in NYC on Nov. 14, 2023, to stay updated on trends like AI, regulations, SEC actions & institutional adoption in the crypto space. Secure early bird discounted tickets now!