Empowering Brokers in a Digital Age: Insights from Autochartist’s CEO

 

Q: Autochartist is an established player in the fintech industry and has become a household name among brokers and traders. What inspired the creation of Autochartist?

 I originally built Autochartist for my own trading needs when trading on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. But that was over 20 years. I strongly believed in Technical Analysis but found no software that automated the detection of technical chart patterns. So, I used my programming skills to automate this task. The next thing I knew, somebody wanted to license it from me. Of course, since then, we’ve expanded to 7 different types of analysis.

Q; Can you describe the core mission and values of the company?

 Autochartist’s core principle is to provide traders with a picture, not a blank canvas. Too many platforms out there send traders into “analysis paralysis”: more and more info and no added value. We want to empower traders to make decisions based on simple, actionable market activity and analysis.

Q: How does Autochartist foster collaboration and innovation within its team, and how has this culture contributed to the company’s continued success?

 Collaboration is one of our core strengths as a company; almost everyone at Autochartist knows how to trade. We run internal trading competitions twice a year to ensure that everyone in the company has put themselves in the shoes of our final consumer.

These types of competitions are significant drivers of innovation; our staff are constantly coming up with ideas of how to simplify their lives as traders and what they’d like to see in the products.

Some of the recent products that our staff have come up with and gone to market:

• Extreme movements – people want to know of extreme movers in the market
• Round Numbers – people want to know when Gold is approaching $2000, or Oil is approaching $60, etc.

Previous innovations include our “Correlating Alerts”, which currently sees click-through rates north of 70%.

Q: What sets Autochartist’s products and services apart in the competitive securities trading industry?

 Many things spring to mind, but I would say it comes down to two things:

First, the simplicity of our user Interfaces – our competitors may have fancy-looking UIs, but they’re impossible to understand or take action on. We focus on simple calls to action.

Second, our sheer breadth and depth of analytics are astounding: Technical Analysis, Statistical Analysis, Macroeconomic Analysis, Company valuations, Risk tools, Options trading tools, and Sentiment Analysis. I don’t think there is a company out there that can compete.

Q: The global financial markets are exciting and dynamic. Technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate. What current trends or technologies do you find most exciting or impactful?

 I know you want me to say “AI”. But you must understand that Autochartist has been producing natural language text for years. So, for us, this stuff isn’t new. Can we do better using new innovations? Yes! But it’s not ground-breaking for us.

Our core value proposition to brokers is our ability to produce content across global financial markets in multiple languages. “Digital transformation at scale”. We want to help brokers improve operational efficiencies using our technology.

Q: How do you foresee the evolution of the securities trading industry in the coming years?

 I see more and more companies moving to OTC products. Margins on listed products are becoming thin, and brokers need to start offering products like Options.

Q: How does Autochartist tailor its offerings to cater to the unique challenges and opportunities present in different global markets?

 I guess I missed this in the earlier question about how we stand out from our competitors. Our services are tailored to the regulatory needs of brokers that cater for multiple jurisdictions and the personal needs of traders.

We empower brokers to personalise content for their traders based on trading behaviour. This type of personalisation results in 15x more click-throughs and activity in trading platforms.

Q: How do you think global economic challenges and uncertainty affect the markets?

 Global economic challenges and uncertainty have always positively affected financial markets. In particular, an increase in volatility is what fuels our industry. So, despite these challenges, economic uncertainty usually promotes increased trade and participation in global markets.

Q: From your perspective, what role does Autochartist play in shaping the ethical use of technology within the fintech sector?

 In an industry filled with scams and get-rich-quick schemes, we have always prided ourselves on being aligned with traders. Many brokers offer “signals”, but some of those are simply random number generators used to promote trade. We have always taken a different approach; we believe that long-term sustainable involvement in financial markets requires a tempered trading approach combining high-quality market research and risk management.

About Autochartist

Autochartist is a leading financial market analytics company offering world-class tools and services to brokers. They leverage big data and proprietary technology to help traders make more informed trading and investment decisions.

Since its inception in 2004, Autochartist has become a global leader in technical analysis, automated financial content generation and trade execution analytics for many leading Stock, Currency, Futures, and CFD brokerage firms. Thanks to strategic partnerships with top-tier online brokers, they service millions of traders in over 100 countries.