The future of investing is Millennial: TradingView acquires TradeIt

TradingView, the largest social trading platform for active retail investors, is acquiring TradeIt in a tie-up intended to build a DIY investor powerhouse for millennials.

TradingView's eight million monthly uniques are drawn to the site and community with technical charting at its center. Nearly 50 percent of the TradingView user base are Millennials and Gen Z makes up another 13 percent. The company has put up triple digit growth for the past three years.

TradeIt provides app developers and publishers with API interfaces to brokerages. So, their users can transact directly from within their apps and sites that they spend time in. Yahoo Finance and StockTwits have both integrated TradeIt's Trading Ticket API into their platforms.

“TradeIt’s secure and compliant relationships with established U.S. retail brokerages, coupled with their robust integrations with top investing apps, allow TradingView to be part of the backbone of the investing ecosystem,” said Denis Globa, TradingView founder and CEO.

According to the company, brokerages see a 10x lift in active user activity and 5x lift in account funding levels when they integrate with TradeIt. TradeIt is also sticky for publishers, which can see up to an 80 percent rise in time spent in their environments.

TradeIt’s API and service suite links to more than $70 billion in active assets at top U.S. brokerage firms. The company was early to embrace mobile investing and was founded by Nathan Richardson, who was a key member of the team that built Yahoo Finance.

TradingView plans to extend the TradeIt ecosystem with new products including Account Opening and Proxy Messaging Delivery, as well as with new publisher relationships. All TradeIt customers will also now have access to TradingView’s charting and quote capabilities. TradingView supplies more than 40,000 websites globally with charts and quotes including Crunchbase, Investopedia, SeekingAlpha, Zacks, Binance, CME Group and Entrepreneur.

“The product pipeline of account opening and messaging services being delivered by TradeIt makes TradingView an essential retail investors service,” said Paul Szurek, vice president at Insight Venture Partners. IVP led a $37M Series B funding for TradingView in 2018.

The growth of both companies flies in the face of swelling passive assets at robo-advisers. Both TradeIt and TradingView service investors who take a more active role in managing their portfolios, doing research, reading charts, and putting in trades.

This demographic is mostly the same community that is behind the fantastic growth of millennial broker, Robinhood. While robo-advisers continue to take money away from mutual funds and brokerages, there is clearly a cohort of investors who don't want to give up all control to the robos.

Many of these millennial investors came of age during 2008. When they first hit the workforce, this demographic faced the worst financial crisis of recent history. Now, with tech IPOs and a rebounding economy, they're taking control of their portfolios.

"Snapchat and Lyft -- these are first big tech IPOs millennials have seen," said Nathan Richardson, TradeIt's founder and CEO. "Now, the companies that they've supported are taking off and they're getting involved in the market."

According to Richardson, TradeIt's millennial users began investing with set-it-and-forget-it investing applications and now, they're getting more serious and more active in the market. They generally have multiple investment accounts and are active investors, making a few trades every month. They also check their portfolios repeatedly throughout the trading day.

For now, the two companies will run their businesses independently. But, if there's an opportunity to cross sell, they'll take it.

"If we're talking to an app, we'll make an intro -- a number of apps we work with have charting," said TradeIt's Richardson.

"There's a clear opportunity."