When FinanceFeeds’ Noam Stiekema got the notice of which companies to interview at the recent Fintech Exchange event in Chicago,…

When FinanceFeeds’ Noam Stiekema got the notice of which companies to interview at the recent Fintech Exchange event in Chicago, one particular name jumped right out was Peeptrade.

Being very familiar with social trading, Peeptrade instantly shouted peep ‘pick me’ (sorry, we could not help ourselves).

A touch of cheeky flair in the name suggested everything social trading essentially stands for; a voyeuristic desire of sorts to “peep” in on another’s portfolio of trades and hopefully sneak an A+ trade or two away.

This was an interview that was going to be fun. All the big name brands and firms with longstanding histories of corporate stature. Then there was Peeptrade and boy oh boy were they ready to disrupt.

Whilst we may be tempted to compare this to what we may consider vanilla copy / social trading, this is being used in markets outside FX, which is something we have yet to see.

Noam met with Juan Mendoza, CEO and founder of Peeptrade and Ali Bakir Director of Business Development to discuss this young startup which is taking of America by storm.

Tell us about Peeptrade. What is it?

For too long investors have only had access to investment research that is difficult to decipher and riddled with conflicts.

Peeptrade gives investors transparent access to top-performing portfolios while handing the investment industry a lifeline to the digital world of social networking and easy to access information, helping us service self-directed investors by providing them with the real time activity of top traders, social posts, financial news, charts, analyst sentiment, and more!

Where did the idea come from? Where did it all start?

Peeptrade founder Juan Mendoza used to work in the financial services industry, and traded his own money. During one particular year he had what he thought was a great trading year, and wondered how he would stack up against all the clients of the broker he used.

Unfortunately, there was no information available. There were paper trading contests to look at, but he thought that information could be biased given that if you have nothing to lose, you are more likely to increase the risk of your portfolio.

So basically, there was no reliable information available, and that is when he began thinking of the Peeptrade concept. A couple of years after that, he was discussing this with a friend and they thought that this trading information had tremendous value, especially for those investors that have good returns. This is how our founders came up with Peeptrade.

Their vision was to create a marketplace where investors share what they’re doing with their own money in real time with other users, so they can improve their returns. The top traders get to monetize their knowledge by charging a small fee compared to other services. That’s how the Peeptrade idea was born!

What asset classes are offered?

We support most kind of asset classes like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, FX, options, and futures. Whilst it is a socially driven platform, customers cannot execute trades directly on the platform.

Are you planning to integrate with clearing brokers in the future in order to allow execution of orders directly on the platform?

We are currently working on allowing people to trade through their own brokers. We will have at least a dozen major brokers on the platform by first week of May.

Any plans to expand into other regions considering that Peeptrade can be used by anyone anywhere?

While Peeptrade’s target market is over 40 million self-directed investors in the United States, we have registered professional investors (‘Peeptrade Gurus’) from all over the world. As we enhance the platform, we will continue to pursue users, or “peepers”, all over the world.

This platform is not just useful for a self-directed investor, it is useful for anyone. It empowers any trader that wants to improve their returns, and it is our dream to get it on the screen of every trader in the world. Additionally, we are actively seeking Gurus from all over the world, and currently have Gurus from four different continents!