Chinese stock markets have soared this year, with the biggest markets booming over 50%, including Shenzhen where some of China’s grade A tech companies are looking to list. At the same time, Chinese companies who have listed abroad are looking to bring their stock back to the local market. Last week Qihoo 360 announced a bid to privatise, led by a buyer consortium that included the company’s CEO.
As the market swells, many fear industry bubbles will develop, which can make trading an uneasy process for less savvy buyers. Several platforms have come up in the past few years that aim to make trading easier for regular consumers and experts alike, here are some promising new Asia-based ones that are hoping to tap into the buyer tastes of China’s growing middle class;
Chaojiaoyi
Chaojiaoyi (or Chaotrade), the Chinese social trading platform, has secured a total of $2.4 million US (15 million RMB) in its pre-series A funding earlier this month (Chinese source). The round was led by The Marker Capital, Charlor Investments and Angelvest Group. The company is one of the graduates from incubation program in Innospace, based in Shanghai.
Chaojiaoyi, started a year ago, is a Chinese social trading platform on which traders can interact with each other by sharing ideas, blogs, links and tips. Users can personalize their own watch list of assets and receive push-notifications on their phones on the relevant price alerts, insights from experts, or other users’ recent trades.
For those less experienced in trading, they can use the “follow” function on expert traders, which mirrors the expert traders’ trades in real time, for example “followers” will execute the same trades in a fraction of second after the “experts” trade certain stock.
Chaojiaoyi currently supports China indices and China A-shares, the shares of companies incorporated in mainland China and traded in Shanghai or Shenzhen, quoted in RMB. While busily working to support more assets and grow their user base, Chaojiaoyi is also looking to raise their Series-A funding in a few months’ time.
Newsystock
Korean-based Newsystock was acquired by YFG (Yello Financial Group) in February this year. YFG is founded by Yello Mobile CEO Sanghyuk Lee and has 150 billion Korean won ($135 million US) sized fund.
Newsystock is a fintech startup that provides quantitative analysis system and recommendation service for retail investors. The company gathers financial raw data, evaluates listed stock then provides charts for long-term and short-term projections, stock ranking, and simulation tools for investors as well as analysis system itself. Using the system, an individual investor can analyze any stock within five minutes.
Launched in South Korea in 2012, the company reached break-even point. The company provides a subscription service model via mobile and website for individual investors and has achieved a robust partnership group in the securities sector including financial media channel HKWOW TV, SNS platform Stock Plus for Kakao, and online trading securities firm Kiwoom Securities, who has had the biggest market share in the brokerage business in Korea for more than seven years.
“Shanghai and Hong Kong’s stock prices are soaring after the Shanghai and Hong Kong connect. We can analyse financial raw data of any stock and we hope Chinese retail investors can benefit from our service.” Co-CEO and Co-founder Ryan Moon said.
It’s interesting to look at how the Chinese stock startups and their Korean counterparts are different. In China, social trading platforms such as Chaojiayi and Snowball (or Xueqiu) are quickly picked up, meaning the Chinese retail investors largely depend on where other people are investing in, while mature stock markets like South Korea depend on the analysis system like Newsystock and Solidware, the learning-based predictive model solution for businesses.
Image Credit: ShutterStock, Chaojiaoyi, Newsystock
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