TradeHero Review - A Stock Market App

If there is any interesting local Finance App, it has to be TradeHero. So what is TradeHero?

TradeHero is a stock market simulation mobile app that draws real-time data from 14 stock exchanges, 45,000 global securities and 1,300 currency pairs. 

Users are credited with a $100,000 starting portfolio and can make trades to create their own virtual portfolio. 

The unique thing about this App is that it combines both social networking and trading & Good Traders can earn money from this!

If you are a good stock picker and generate high Return On Investment (ROI), players can follow you by paying US$1.99 per month. You will get to pocket half of this fee by giving people a glimpse of your trades. 

In contrast, if you are curious about the top traders' portfolio, you can pay US$1.99 to see their current trades and subsequently, you may try to mirror them in your real money account.

5 shortcuts at the bottom of the App:

1) Trade: The list shows all the popular stocks that you maybe interested in. If not, you can search for the stocks using the search bar.

2) Community: 

The app’s Leaderboards identify the top traders (known as ‘Heroes’) by their returns, and they are ranked by Exchange, Sector, Monthly or Quarterly returns, as well as overall returns.

The concept of how the company earn their keep is through the subscription of followers to the whole list of "heroes". Followers can subscribe, for a small monthly fee, to follow and receive trade feeds from their chosen Heroes via push notifications on their mobile device. These push notifications detail each Buy and Sell action of the Hero, as well as the experts' tips and personal insight into successful investment strategies.

 3) Bull icon:

Right in the middle lies the Logo of the App, where all the activity is captured like a summary page. Details like which Hero you are following, push notifications of Heroes' trades etc...

4) Positions:

Simply put, it shows your open positions & your previously closed positions. ROI is shown with every trade. You can click the ">" for more information like

• P&L
• Total Invested:
• Opened (trade made)
• Closed (trade ended)
• Period (your holding period)

5) Heroes:

Lastly, your credit balance & the "Heroes" you are following are displayed.

Pros & Cons of the App

I have seen a very good review from bigfatpurse & realize that one major flaw with Tradehero (as with any other stimulation game) is that there is absence of demand and supply.

In real life, one has to sell in order for another to buy due to a fixed number of shares. It's a to-n-fro thingy. Whereas, in TradeHero, you can buy or sell any quantity you like. Moreover, transactions can also be completed any time, even after market hours. In other words, transaction is guaranteed without the need to consider demand and supply.

And this leads to easy ROI by trading off the penny stocks which fluctuate by huge margins daily but not easily reflected in the real life market. Thus, some top scores in the Leaderboards may be subject to such scrutiny & followers may be in for a surprise.

I feel that they can still make some improvements to the app like 

1. Raising the minimum stock price (to more than $0.20) so that penny stocks are out of the door. 
2. Categorizing top traders not just by ROI; but inculcate investment strategies such as value investing, income/dividend investing which will attract even a larger crowd.
3. Many a time, i wish to seek out opportunities from different markets but i am unfamiliar with them (e.g. Bursa Malaysia, Thailand, hong kong etc.). I hope that this App can bridge the information gap and allow users to see how other country's traders are doing in their portfolios as well. I think this can be called geographical segmentation? lol.

Nevertheless, it is still a relatively new concept in Singapore and i absolutely respect the team behind this app. All the best to TradeHero & Huat ah!