Aries CEO Reda Falih On Platform Growth, Updates: 'The Average Trader Has Evolved'

Aries, a retail-focused brokerage built by and for traders, launched globally this summer.

In a follow-up conversation, CEO Reda Falih discussed the company’s success since then, as well as future plans.

What Happened: Founded in 2019, Aries takes a shot at low-cost brokers Webull, Firstrade and Trading212, among others, with its holistic platform that merges premium UI and data with low-cost market access.

After launching globally last month, its growth and retention are shocking, Falih said. 

“Before launching, our target demographic was international,” he said in a conversation on the U.S. market for brokerage solutions being saturated.

“To our surprise, we’ve seen a massive amount of our users come from the United States, and … we’ve been consistent since then.”

In a discussion regarding high retention, Falih pointed to a lack of platform issues and recent additions like an options profit and loss calculator that enables users to discover and hone their use of options.

Why All The Growth? Aries is a healthy medium, catering to both basic and advanced users, the CEO said. 

“You have all the charts and indicators, you have the advanced options tools, alerts, and it is all integrated,” Falih said in a conversation on allowing global users to level up and lower their costs.

“In the United Kingdom, a lot of trading apps don’t even have stop losses,” he chuckled.

What Makes Aries Different: Unlike competitors, Aries has an open line of communication with customers, Falih said. 

In light of customer demand, Aries is expanding the depth and breadth of the assets and tools it offers.

“The new Options Lab is a twist on the real-time options calculator,” Falih said. Once released, customers will be able to discover and analyze the top strategies with the highest probability of success based on internal models and options pricing calculations.

“There will be a discovery page, in the options chain, that shows you the most profitable strategies based on probability,” he explained. “You can plug in your own options, too, and it will give you the basic profit and loss grid based on the Black-Scholes formula.”

Why It Matters: Aries is a multiyear project that was opened to the public last month.

The hardest part of the development process was approval, not funding, Falih said. 

“By law, in the U.S., you can’t have equities and crypto mixed together in one account,” he said.

For example, “your Robinhood crypto account is completely separate from your Robinhood equity account.”

Soon, Aries will have live its Options Lab, cryptocurrency, futures, an improved sign-up and login process, as well as a desktop platform, the CEO said. 

Falih then wants to add free real-time options flow and dark pool data, further adding to Aries’ differentiating features. 

“Over the next six to eight months, our platform is really going to be rounded out and I think it’ll market itself. We’re not even 20% done.”