“I got into trading because the internet is dead and the planet’s on fire. Trading is exciting, it’s challenging, it’s a great way to stay informed on current events without slipping into existential dread… it also teaches great lessons and it’s much more fun with friends.”
IG Group’s US operation has announced the launch of a new mobile app, Bad Trader, to serve a community focused on financial markets that embraces speculation.
IG US Holdings, Inc., the parent company of tastylive and tastytrade, has gone live with Bad Trader to help people better understand how to take calculated risks and when it may be appropriate to take them.
Aimed at Gen Z and millennials, Bad Trader offers daily hosted livestreams where young, but knowledgeable traders drive interactive conversations around markets, trading, sports, politics, and other things that probably matter. Users can also connect their brokerage account to set up trade orders through a simple and intuitive interface.
According to people familiar with the matter, “Bad Trader is like if r/wallstreetbets went live on Twitch”.
Bad Trader to roast friends for their impulsive decisions
Bad Trader users can hop into chat to roast their friends for their impulsive decisions, as well as complete daily tasks, earn badges, and accumulate in-game points. Bad Trader users can also connect to their tastytrade account through a simplified, intuitive, and tasteful neon interface, with the plan to include connections to additional brokers in future releases.
Created to give users a fun, educational, and experiential introduction to risk, community engagement for young investors and traders is at the core of Bad Trader’s mission.
According to survey data collected in November and December 2022, 41% of Gen Z and 38% of Millennials surveyed report owning individual stocks. Social media is the top source of financial information for Millennial and Gen Z investors, with 42% of Millennials and nearly half of Gen Z (48%) learning about investing and financial topics from YouTube and apps such as Instagram, TikTok, twitter and Reddit.
These trends have inspired Bad Trader’s novel approach on what a finance app should feel like: a community-driven platform centered around watching entertaining, knowledgeable traders and learning from each other’s mistakes.
“Trading is a great way to stay informed on current events without slipping into existential dread”
Bad Trader is led by chief executive Julia Spina, author of The Unlucky Investor’s Guide to Options Trading, an Amazon best seller in multiple categories, and former Financial Researcher at IG’s tastylive. She transitioned into finance in 2020 after earning bachelor’s degrees in engineering physics (2017) and applied mathematics (2017) and a master’s in physics (2018).
Julia Spina, CEO of Bad Trader, commented: “I got into trading because the internet is dead and the planet’s on fire. Trading is exciting, it’s challenging, it’s a great way to stay informed on current events without slipping into existential dread… it also teaches great lessons and it’s much more fun with friends.
Tom Sosnoff, founder and CEO of tastylive and the visionary behind Bad Trader, added: “I hate giving quotes like this, write whatever you want. Also, go download Bad Trader.”
Bad Trader is owned by IG US Holdings, Inc., parent company of tastytrade, an online retail brokerage firm, tastylive, a financial content and education platform, tasty Software Solutions, LLC, and a subsidiary of IG Group Holdings PLC.
