Fast Forward Inc. - Investment Management for Multiple Assets

Too many assets, too few management tools

Fast Forward Inc. launched in 2020 to help retail investors manage their investments in different portfolios.

"Unlike institutional investors, retail investors have an edge in diversifying their investment portfolios resulting in a combination of various assets including equities, mutual funds, ETFs, real estate and cryptocurrencies," said Youngmin Joo, CEO/Founder.

"Demand for an all-in-one investment management tool peaked as the retail investment market exploded," said Joo. So, Fast Forward Inc. developed DOMINO an easy-to-use, intuitive app that addresses retail investors’ need to manage all their investments in different portfolios.

DOMINO

The DOMINO app provides users insight into their current, overall investment balances. Users input positions on various categories of their investment portfolios, be it equities, mutual funds, ETFs, real estate, gold or even cryptocurrencies, and then are able to track the up-to-date performance of each investment. DOMINO also provides a trending chart visualizing shifts in balances. Additionally, users can learn about the financial details of each asset including price, dividends, corporate activities, fundamentals and more.

Reliable index data

The Cboe Global Indices Feed provides real-time index data for DOMINO, including values for the Cboe Volatility Index^® (VIX^® Index) and the S&P 500^® Index.

"DOMINO prides itself on providing reliable and accurate data, which is why the company has partnered with Cboe as a data provider," said Joo.

"Having access to index data from Cboe^® gives DOMINO users a more transparent understanding of market conditions to help them make informed investment decisions," said Joo.

Fast forward to the future

While Fast Forward Inc. currently offers an investment-management tool, the team is setting their sights on a trading and investing platform.

"We are aiming to merge scattered investing information and provide an end-to-end investing experience for all kinds of assets," said Joo.

As a Seoul-based fintech startup with engineering talents from Google/Meta/Naver/Kakao, and backed by Korea’s top-tier Venture Capital partners, the company is well poised for growth.

Endex: The Social Index App

"There's gotta be a better way to do this," thought Brittany Wright and Kevin Loo, co-founders of Endex. The two investment professionals had been sharing stock information with family and friends via a group chat — information that included weights, risk summaries and timing. While keeping all that information in a notes app, they knew there had to be a better way of doing it. They also wondered if they could be compensated for their contributions.

After listening to the needs of many investors, Wright and Loo decided to quit their jobs to pursue Endex full-time.

Your Index Playlist

Endex's broker-agnostic, social-investment platform enables users to create, share and copy custom stock indexes (endexes).

"You can think of an Endex like a playlist of stocks," said Loo. "On Spotify you can create themed playlists based on genre, mood or activity, and easily share them with other listeners."

Endex provides a similar model in which users can create custom stock portfolios based on anything from industry, technology or ESG to additional value considerations, and easily share them with other investors.

The ability to create and share custom portfolios enables investors to discover and copy strategies that match their interests, values, risk tolerance and other investment needs. Everything about Endex is customizable from the name, description and privacy to the individual stock components, weighting methodology and tags.

Because Endex is broker agnostic, users can even copy custom stock portfolios directly through their current brokerages via Endex's integrations.

Making Money

Users who create quality content and Endexes can monetize their profiles through subscriptions and tips, for when the winners are feeling particularly generous.

Endex also rewards its users by giving them a percentage of Endex's revenue when their Endex reaches the app's leaderboard.

Getting Real (Time)

Endex needs real-time data for its end users and subscribes to Cboe's U.S. equities data for top-of-book quotations, matched trade price, volume and execution time of stocks.

"By leveraging the Cboe EDGX Top Feed's low bandwidth and processing requirements, we are able to give our users seamless, accurate and timely information about the market," said Loo.

Looking Forward

Endex is continuing to improve its offering. Currently they are working on providing key metrics, including the Sharpe, Sortino, Return Retracement Ratios, for transparency into a portfolio's or strategy's past performance. Additionally, Endex will be rolling out feature-paired integrations with some of the top U.S. brokerages that offer fractional share trading.

Rakuten Trade — the forefront of digital trading in Malaysia

Rakuten Trade started with one mission in mind — provide the comforts of a traditional broker while disrupting the industry, bringing everything online with the lowest brokerage fees in town.

A joint venture between a Malaysian company — Kenanga Investment Bank Berhad — and a Japanese one — Rakuten Securities — Rakuten Trade was the first to offer local investors a completely digital trading platform.

"Adopting a fintech business model successfully reduced the barriers to trading for our customers," said Mr. Kazumasa Mise, CEO at Rakuten Trade.

"We've made access to investing much easier," said Mise. "Our efforts continue to be well received among local investors especially with young adults looking to dip their toes into the investment pool."

Cash Upfront

The Cash Upfront account is Rakuten Trade's most popular product. Approximately 80% of Rakuten Trade accounts are Cash Upfront accounts. Cash Upfront trading operates like a debit card, allowing you to trade using only the cash available in your account.

"This means your trades from the account are fully funded by the deposits you make into your Cash Upfront account while the remaining balance is placed in a Trust account held by Kenanga Investment Bank," said Mise.

Recently Rakuten Trade expanded its digital trading services to include foreign equity trading on its next generation Cash Upfront account. Rakuten Trade clients can now trade in Malaysia and the U.S. via the same familiar trading platform with the same low brokerage rates.

U.S. Markets

The U.S. equities market is the first foreign market Rakuten Trade has offered on its platform. To power the company's foray into the U.S. markets, Rakuten Trade takes the Cboe One Feed. The Cboe One Feed comprises data from Cboe's four U.S. equities exchanges to provide a broad view of the U.S. equities market.

Rakuten Trade feeds Cboe's market data through a vendor and distributes it to its retail clients.

Innovating for Customers

Rakuten Trade strives to provide convenience to investors with easy-to-use and innovative services and a client-first mindset. The company continues to expand its offering to add value to its customers that includes a reward eco-system, access to digital execution and settlement of trades, as well as research reports and educational content.

Zingeroo – Competitive, Real-Life Trading

Zingeroo's path to existence had a less than usual beginning. The idea started after a debate among siblings. CEO/Founder Zoë Barry was working for a hedge fund when she found herself in a debate about the direction of the stock market with her brothers — college students taking economics courses.

To settle the debate, Barry tried gifting a competitive, social trading experience to her brothers that Christmas…only to find one didn't exist.

"How could there not be a way to do real-money trading, banter with each other, and track a leaderboard of individual trades?" Barry said about the experience.

"We wanted to compete and track performance on individual trades. I thought the idea was so obvious; it was like inventing the Post-It^® Note. Voila, Zingeroo was born," she said.

Now Zingeroo seeks to revolutionize competitive and social trading. Aimed at current and new traders, the Zingeroo app is an all-in-one, real-time trading platform. Users can make equity and options trades, build trading teams and compete with friends.

Real-Time Data

Real-time data was a must for this app. Zingeroo partnered with Cboe to offer U.S. options and equities data from Cboe's exchanges. Cboe's real-time quote and trade data makes it possible for Zingeroo to provide accurate and timely market data for its users.

Let the Competition Begin

Users can compete in Zingeroo through two features: Zingeroo Zones and Zingeroo Bullpens + Chats.

Zingeroo Zones are optional, free events users can enter to see how their portfolio competes against other users. Participants can enter their entire portfolios for the competition or select their top stocks and options positions. Coming soon, there will be various sector-specific Zones.

Zingeroo Bullpens + Chat is the company's solution to providing users the opportunity to truly invest with their friends. The feature allows you to create a private area for your group. Within a Bullpen, users can build a Zone, similar to the Zingeroo Zones, but only accessible to members of that Bullpen.

An in-app chat feature provides the ability to share trading knowledge, stay up to date on shared news and exchange friendly banter with fellow Zone participants.

Zingeroo continues to work on enhancements to improve the app, including new Zone types and $0 commission equity trades.

Zingeroo is a fully licensed broker-dealer. All securities and investments are offered to self-directed customers by Z-Squared. Z-Squared is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ''FINRA."

Investagrams – Changing the Landscape

The mission for Investagrams is clear — change the financial landscape in the Philippines.

With less than 1% of the Filipino population investing in the stock market, Investagrams set forth to change that by launching their financial charting platform in 2014.

"Day by day, we are enabling more and more Filipinos to invest in the financial markets by providing the best charting platform in the country, top-notch educational courses on investment — and more than anything — a community geared toward holistic improvement," said JC Bisnar, CEO.

Charting Platform

Investagrams' charting platform is built for both beginning and experienced traders, offering market tools for equities in the Philippines, U.S., and Singapore, to cryptocurrencies, to FOREX, and to commodities.

Within their platform users can monitor, screen, and systematically journal their trades to significantly improve a trader's performance.

"Our users spend 80% of their time in our platform, analyzing the market, creating trade plans, and improving their craft to succeed," said Bisnar. "We have incorporated and built multiple features including watchlists for multiple markets, a bull and bear meter, watcher alerts set by technical indicators, a screener for both fundamental and technical factors, and a very reliable chart to help you with all your trading paraphernalia." he said.

Making the U.S. Market Accessible

"Cboe's real-time BZX Top exchange data delivered via the cloud is our gateway to reaching greater heights by offering one of the most heavily traded financial markets in our charting and analytical tools," said Bisnar. "We are inviting more users globally to give our charting platform a try and make better informed decisions to succeed in the U.S. equities market."

Investagrams is one of the first platforms to take real-time Cboe U.S. equities data via the cloud.

Getting Investors Going

Investagrams offers services beyond their charting platform. The company has multiple educational courses, a social community, and a virtual trading platform that even includes a game to help users test their trading strategies and compete with one another. The best part — most of these are for free.

Bisnar says "Investagrams is looking at new features while holistically improving its existing features. Compatibility with new data, empowering users to chart, trade, and monitor multiple markets worldwide all in one platform are just some of our projects in the pipeline.

"We are inviting everyone to experience our platform, accessible both via website and via our mobile app" said Bisnar. "May your trading success start with Investagrams."

Global Prime - Transparent Trading Meets Technology

Global Prime is a trading technology firm with multiple trading and technology platforms that enables it to deliver bespoke solutions to a global client base. Founded in 2010 with a goal of democratizing financial markets, Global Prime has worked to enhance its products and services, offering industry-leading pricing and liquidity to both retail and institutional clients, with an emphasis on transparency, honesty and a commitment to excellence.

Global Prime Offering

Global Prime partnered with Cboe U.S. Equities to provide data from Cboe's EDGX Exchange. Real-time EDGX pricing data is disseminated into Global Prime's TraderEvolution platform via their Prime XM Xcore.

"Global Prime takes immense pride in partnering with Cboe and is excited to offer our clients an equites product with the same level of transparency and excellence in service that our clients have become accustomed," said Jeremy Kinstlinger, Director at Global Prime.

"We look forward a long lasting and prosperous partnership rooted in our shared commitment to innovation and growth," said Kinstlinger.

In addition to its equites offering, Global Prime covers all major markets including FX, commodities, indices, crypto and bonds. With two prime broker relationships and licenses with ASIC (Australia), FSA (Seychelles) and VFSC (Vanuatu), Global Prime provides margin-trading services to retail clients and offers Prime of Prime services to a range of institutional clients.

Trade Receipts

Global Prime is an industry leader in trade transparency and offers an exclusive feature called trade receipts. Trade receipts enable clients to query vital information about their trades such as execution speed, fill rate, latency, slippage, tick data and other trade metrics.

Most importantly, trade receipts enable clients to see which bank or non-bank liquidity provider filled their trade. Clients can also see the state of the order book at the time of their trade, which instills confidence and a unique insight into the backend mechanics of Global Prime's broking model.

Coming Soon

Global Prime is in the final stages of testing with Trading View, a popular multi-asset charting and trading platform. This will enable Global Prime clients to trade FX, metals, indices, commodity futures, cryptos and U.S. equities via the Trading View platform, making the Global Prime Trading View offering one of the most comprehensive in the industry. Global Prime is also looking at adding Australian equities to its product offering by taking Chi-X Australia market data.

iFAST - Wealth Management Fintech Platform

iFAST Corp has come a long way since breaking into the online funds distribution scene as a homegrown Singapore Fintech player – more than a decade before the term "Fintech" was coined.

In 2000, when unit trust purchases were mainly limited to big players such as banks and insurance companies, and mostly via offline channels, the founders of iFAST Corp saw a chance to leverage up-and-coming internet trends by bringing the unit trust transactional process online through the launch of its B2C platform, Fundsupermart.com ("FSM").

In recent years, iFAST has put its focus on broadening the platform's range and depth of investment products and services to provide investors with a comprehensive suite of wealth management solutions.

iFAST currently offers access to more than 11,000 investment products including unit trusts ("funds"), bonds and Singapore Government Securities ("SGS"), stocks and exchange traded funds ("ETFs"), and insurance products. The company also provides services such as online discretionary portfolio management services, cash solutions, research and investment seminars, Fintech solutions, and investment administration and transaction services to financial advisory firms, financial institutions, banks, multinational companies, as well as to retail and high-net-worth investors in Asia.

iFAST powers the display of real-time U.S.-listed stocks pricing information on its platforms with the Cboe One Summary data feed. Cboe One Summary data are also used on the company's trading system for internal use, as well as for live online trading.

The most popular features on iFAST's platforms are the Stocks Screener and ETF Selector. The screeners allow investors to more effectively navigate the huge selection of stocks and ETFs available on the platform to help find the stocks and/or ETFs that best meet their investment criteria. There is also a Chart Centre tool that allows investors to compare the performance of selected ETFs across different time periods.

Looking ahead, iFAST plans to offer more advanced order types to cater to more sophisticated investors, as well as improve screener functions.

Atom Finance - Investment research tools for all

Atom Finance provides a range of cutting-edge investment research tools and content to retail investors. Eric Shoykhet, Founder and CEO launched Atom in 2018 after recognizing a large gap in investment research landscape. Shoykhet noticed existing solutions were either too simple for thoughtful analysis or too expensive for individual investors.

"We sought to build a platform that was not only accessible from a cost standpoint but also incorporated the functionality of professional investment research tools," Shoykhet said. "We believe we can provide that same institutional-quality experience to everyone."

Atom's services are available as a web-based platform and mobile app. Features of the platform include a digital sandbox where users can create financial models instantly, pre-populated with consensus projections; as well as X-Ray, a powerful search tool to help users find references to keywords across news articles, SEC filings, transcripts and more. Users can also collaborate with fellow investors to share important insights with Atom's discussion boards and group chat functionality.

Atom's most popular service is its Portfolio Integration tool. Through Portfolio, users can link their existing investment accounts and see real-time P&L, portfolio statistics, diversification and more. This portfolio information is enhanced by Atom's suite of institutional tools and data.

Atom Finance leverages Cboe's exchange data to provide real-time quotes of U.S. equities for its users. These quotes enable various functions within Atom's research platform including price alerts, charting and valuation models.

"We depend on the reliability and accuracy of Cboe's market data to ensure a consistent user experience for our customers," Shoykhet said.

The team at Atom Finance recently completed Series A funding and is working on new content and collaboration features that will make the platform even more enticing. They're also looking to expand their team in Brooklyn, New York.

Ninety Nine - Zero commission investing is coming to Europe

Started in September 2018 by two Spanish entrepreneurs living in the U.S., Ninety Nine was created with the mission of making financial markets accessible to 99% of the population by removing the barriers of complexity, transparency and cost.

Having grown tired of the high commissions traditional brokers were charging, Ninety Nine identified the opportunity to create a commission-free brokerage model.

"For non-professional retail customers, commissions drain a big percentage - if not all - of the profits earned on investments," said Mr. Javier Sanz. "This practice was the main reason many people saw investing in the stock market as something restricted to the privileged few."

Ninety Nine has sought to change this by introducing a commission-free broker model that eliminates frictions and allows investors of all sizes to save more money.

"High commissions affect people with big pockets too," said Mr. Javier Sanz. "When an investor wants to trade larger quantities, the commissions vary as a function of size. This translates to the disproportionate and constant payment of an excessive ‘tax' to financial middlemen that could be substantially reduced by the use of technology."

The commission-free proposal has proven Ninety Nine's most popular feature with a simple and intuitive interface. Cboe's low-cost market data enables Ninety Nine to keep its costs in check. Ninety Nine uses Cboe's European and U.S market data to provide customers with access to real-time prices via iOS and Android apps.

"Traditional players like to complicate the user experience," said Mr. Javier Sanz. "We believe that in today's world it's all about keeping things simple with clear value propositions and outstanding customer service."

Ninety Nine will soon be releasing an online broker feature which will offer commission free trading of both European and US stocks. Other asset classes will be progressively added.

What's next?

Moving forward, Ninety Nine is expanding their commission-free trading model across all 28 countries in the EU.

dough – The commission-free online broker with premium content and insights

dough is a new, online broker and application that offers commission-free trading for listed stocks and ETFs.

Equal parts brokerage, education and experienced insight, dough's mission is to bring understanding to risk – removing it as a barrier.

A New Way of Doing Things

"dough provides powerful investing capabilities and insights that typically come at a high price," said Victor Jones, CEO of dough. Jones says that dough meets the demand as a broker offering investing capabilities and zero commission – investors no longer have to give up one for the other.

Jones is the former director of Trading and Operations at TD Ameritrade. The new venture hosts an impassioned team of industry experts from Merrill Lynch, TradeStation and Goldman Sachs, among others.

Market Data, Insights and Education

dough uses the Cboe One Feed to provide real-time quotes in its mobile application. The dough team also uses Cboe market data for internal analytics that drive their insights. dough says that through their platform those insights can be tailored to a person's interests.

One example is their dough Selects feature in which investors can uncover investment potential in their passions, whether that's video games, fashion, travel or anything in between.

In addition to the personalized insights provided through the application, dough provides daily coverage of the market. Their The 3Cap™ unpacks today's money-moving headlines in less than three minutes and their Stock Report Card provides buy and sell ratings from professional Wall Street analysts.

Click. Link. Invest.

The dough team is proud of its transparent pricing and how easy it is for investors to open an account.

"In as little as three minutes, you can transfer funds from more than 11,500 financial institutions, including Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo. You can open, fund, and start trading in minutes," said Kyle Goad, dough's President of Operations and former Director of Operations at TradeStation.

Intrinio – Financial Data Platform

Intrinio is a financial data platform founded in 2012 by Rachel Carpenter and Joseph French to provide developers and engineers from fintech companies, large institutions, hedge funds and universities with a financial data API that they can rapidly integrate into their applications, websites, widgets, and more.

Today the company offers more than 300 financial data feeds, including international stock data, FDIC bank data, real-time U.S. stock prices, cryptocurrency, futures, fundamental U.S. 10Q and 10K data, and insider transactions.

Intrinio's most popular financial data feed was one of the first data products the company developed – the U.S. Fundamentals and Stock Prices Bundle. This feed includes market cap, gross margin, total revenue, last price, price history, volume, split, EBITDA, ROI, standardized and as-reported financials, company news, and more for over 10,000 publicly traded U.S. companies.

Cboe provides Intrinio with U.S. equities data through the Cboe BZX U.S. Equities Top Feed.

"The BZX Top Feed provides the right mix of affordability and quality that financial innovators need," said Rachel Carpenter, CEO of Intrinio.

Recently Intrinio has been working on advancing their API to make working with their data faster and easier.

"We're always working on expanding the offerings on our platform to power a new generation of fintech innovation," said Carpenter.

In addition to their data products, Intrinio is also proud of the extra support they provide developers. Intrinio created the Developer Program in which qualified developers receive six months of free financial data, as well as support, and marketing promotion once graduating from the program.

Sentieo – Financial Data Platform

Sentieo is a full-featured financial data and research platform designed to optimize the equity research process. The platform helps more than 600 customers – including hedge funds, investment banks and private equity firms – simplify their workflow and make better decisions by providing a unique combination of financial, linguistic, and alternative data along with a collaboration tool.

The idea for Sentieo came from CEO and co-founder Alap Shah, a former Wall Street analyst who found himself frustrated with the lack of adequate tools available for the buy-side research workflow. Sentieo was launched in 2016, and two years later, the company processes more than 20 million financial documents from 64,000+ companies around the world.

Cboe powers Sentieo's equity data terminal and launchpad screens by providing real-time U.S. equities pricing feeds. With that data, Sentieo's customers can stay on top of the markets in real-time – without having to go to another terminal or data source.

Shah says that his customers' favorite feature is the ability to rapidly search through millions of financial documents in seconds using the platform's natural language processing algorithms.

"Much of the important information that financial analysts need is contained in unstructured text, which we make more accessible to our users," Shah explained.

"Sentieo's platform is underpinned by the latest search technology," he said. "We overlay search, collaboration and automation on key aspects of an analyst's workflow. That way, our customers can spend less time searching, and more time analyzing."

Sentieo will be enhancing its ability to extract data from unstructured documents using machine-learning technology. Over the next 12 to 18 months, Sentieo also plans to grow its team and expand into existing markets, with a primary focus on the buy-side community.

Invstr. Play-Learn-Invest. App that allows everyone to become an investor.

Invstr engages users via an auto-personalized mobile platform that offers the ability to practice playing investment games, follow instruments, connect with other Invstrs, and trade via partner brokers.

Markets

Invstr carries streaming real-time Cboe equity and index data. It takes advantage of Cboe's pan-European coverage as a one-stop shop for 15 markets in Europe, and large presence in the U.S. Other real-time asset classes include Crypto-currencies, FX, bonds, futures and commodities. Additional regional equity markets are covered in delayed form. Invstr also offers fully customizable market news from top financial publications and commentators.

Users can customize their watchlist to follow instruments that interest them, or are recommended to them, and instantly access related information via each instrument hub. This includes comparison charts with technical overlays and annotation capabilities, news, posts, research and calendars.

Gamification

Users can practice buying and selling investments with streaming market data in a fun and safe way by playing games. They can watch their investment game P&L update in real-time and see where they stand against the rest of the Invstr community through the leader board.

Social

Invstr offers a full social engagement experience. Users can share their opinions, news articles, charts and game performances by connecting with other ‘Invstrs' across the world; and even share across other social platforms including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Investing

Through local broker partnerships, Invstr users can trade for real, including fractional share trading with US broker DriveWealth, LLC.

Service Solutions & Affiliations

Invstr offers co-branded and white labelled solutions to financial and media organizations looking to re-engage and understand the needs of their clients by using Invstr's neural-network recommendation and marketing engines, feature function-based APIs and web widgets.

missingSTEP – Suite of mobile apps providing real-time stock analysis

San Francisco-based missingSTEP is a leading investment analysis tool provider for the mobile market. The company reaches more than 300,000 users through mobile applications that combine a deep understanding of what traders want with cutting edge app design innovation.

The result is a sophisticated set of tools that ensure users — often expert technical traders — can manage risk easily and on the go. Of missingSTEP's suite of nine apps, Daily Stocks Pro is the most popular, and best known. It was previously named Best Finance App of the Year by Apple, and was one of the top ten top grossing apps in the entire App Store.

An advanced stock analysis tool, it filters all stocks traded on Cboe and identifies those showing the greatest potential for profit. Behind the scenes, Cboe data is used to run technical trading models and to filter and scan the market for predefined technical conditions. "Our goal is to enable our customers to successfully engage with financial markets around the world, which is why real-time, high-quality market data is so vital for our business and our users," says missingSTEP founder Alp Simsir. "The adaptability of Cboe data, matched with Cboe commitment to low cost, is critical for us as we develop and innovate our offer to our customers."

Other missingSTEP apps, like 1 Stock A Day, offer share predictions and community signals for buying and selling securities, while others offer data and signals on the global FX market and commodities complex. All missingSTEP apps share a common feature: they are tailored to the specific needs of users. Because just as Cboe agrees, when it comes to financial markets and market structure, one size doesn't fit all.

What's Next

missingSTEP will make in-app trading available in Q1 2017, underscoring the importance of real-time market data. The company also wants to make its apps available for Android devices, and after significant requests from users, is looking into building a Windows-based desktop platform.