Recently coming out of stealth is a new zero commission broker in the US called Matador. Itās differentiation from Robinhood is that there is a social feed so you can see what your friends are trading and āto encourage conversation and learningā. Also, pretty high cash rates of 2.5% up to $10k. Only on iOS at the moment and Android is coming soon/waitlist.
As part of the unveiling, the company also announced a fundraise of $9m from Accel and Greylock.
I like their mission, which is to make investing less scary but social sounds risky. Although itās good to see they have tried to counter some of the issues with
āMatador has a No Day Trading Policy so tread lightly in the day trading zone to avoid getting your account restricted.ā - Source
I wonder how they do the social element. Whether that is like a Twitter where anyone can follow anyone else? Or whether itās limited to your contacts list?
I also like that they show losses in the social feed, for instance it says āJoshua sold IBM and lost 7.5%ā.
The idea sounds very good, I think it will be very successful. Their mission sounds very similar to Freetrade. Interested to hear the thoughts on someone from Freetradeās team on whether there could be any plans on implementing that social element on their platform as well.
Social could be risky depending who you are communicating with. Thereās always self appointed experts and thatās the main danger but I know thereās a few of us on slack who discuss what investments we have chosen and itās fun. Normally itās what has fallen dramatically though 
Yes that is definitely truth. Can be a double- edged sword for sure, interested to see how that turns out though.
I find hard to reconcile the idea of following your mates investments and the idea of do your own research.
In a winning spree it can feel great, but when prices start to fall without mercy I fear the chances of making self damaging decisions may be exacerbated with unrealized losses becoming realized ones because someone else did the same.
Also, both entry and exit points are different for different people, hence timing must be different too.
Making buy or sell decision based on what someone else did may not be totally bad if one understands the rationale behind it. If thatās not the case then I canāt think thatās something to be made available nor encouraged. If one doesnāt understand the reasons that led to a decision, then it shouldnāt copy that decision. Deciding to buy into an asset just because my mate just bought it isnāt a criteria I can classify as sound. And it seems to me thatās exactly what that sort of social feed encourages to do.
I personally prefer a community forum where each one decides what to share or reveal to the other members. And each one takes the full responsibility for the consequences of itās own decisions, good or bad
Just because you can see what others are investing in or selling doesnāt mean you will copy it, although I agree Iād like to select what information is shared
My idea was also that social aspect to be more of a discussion based rather than blindly following people, but when I give it more thought it can get ugly used the wrong way. I donāt want to imagine all the people from Robinhoodās community or r/wallstreetbets at one place having the chance to share their trades live.
Of course not, but the risk is there.
Take a look at my imaginary friend. Let me call him John.
Jonh is a smart guy. Heās funny. Everybody likes him and everybody listens to what he says. Heās a self confident dude.
I like John and I think heās reliable. He starts buying into this company and in the other one, and then the other. I donāt copy heās trades. Not straight away at least. Time goes by. Heās results are better than mine. I give in and start copying some of his decisions. Some dreadful event send those investments towards the gutter and I donāt know what to doā¦
I simply fear something like this may happen
isnāt that the same risk you take if you talk to imaginary John in the imaginary pub?
Sounds like eToro only difference is they do real equities eToro does synthetic securities such as spread bets and CFDs.
āToroā - Spanish for Bull
āMatadorā - Spanish for bullfighter
I think I see your point. At a fundamental level itās not different at all. And if we were to add our phones in the pub with the app openedā¦
I donāt like it. Maybe Iām old fashioned
I think whatās interesting is the amount of money theyāve managed to raise from pretty prominent investors with little market traction (so far).
It could prove useful for benchmarking Freetradeās next round. Assuming a sensible amount of dilution for the new money, e.g. 20% to 30%, Matador could be worth around $30m to $45m post money. All this with only an iOS app and no meaningful user count, as theyāve just come out of stealth.
eToro announced last week that they will soon offer commission free stock trading in the UK.
Somewhat more interesting is they acquired āFirmoā which will āoperate as an internal R&D arm within eToro focused on developing blockchain-oriented trade execution and the infrastructure behind the digital representation of tokenized assets.ā.
Although I loved my time on eToro, there were a lot of drawbacks and hidden costs. Also the system was quite buggy. If Freetrade had their wealth of offerings, Iād never look back.