The Trade Ideas Story
What Customers Really Want
Anyone involved in the markets is there for one reason, to make money. And that is exactly what we help our customers accomplish with greater efficiency.
Why use Trade Ideas
We make the computers in our datacenters act like traders by playing thousands of trading scenarios every single day. Much like IBM’s Watson, our computers are constantly learning which market relationships have predictive outcomes. Our software identifies what is working in a down market or in an up market, and suggests exactly what to buy or short and when to exit. Trade Ideas does all the number crunching at our data centers allowing our clients to be the CEO of their financial empire. The CEO doesn’t pour over spreadsheets, that’s for accountants and statisticians. CEOs make decisions and put capital to work.
The Backstory
We founded Trade Ideas in 2002 after an experience we now affectionately call the $50 million education. In 2000 we were part of a venture capital financed effort to bring direct access trading technology to hedge fund managers. It turned out that rather than helping us nurture and grow the business, technology, and vision, our venture capital partners taught us exactly what not to do, to the tune of $50 million. Looking back in hindsight, it was the best thing that ever happened. By catering mainly to professional traders, active traders, and hedge funds, Trade Ideas LLC was able to build a name for itself.
Why We Made Trade Ideas
In our previous venture we had the good fortune to meet and build relationships with very knowledgeable players in the business of investing and trading. We learned that access to high-touch information makes all the difference between success and failure. Investing and trading are difficult enough. And the amount of data out there for an investor or trader to look through makes it even harder to find any kind of an edge. Trade Ideas software was created to be that edge – the difference between success and failure. Our technology accomplishes what no human can do. And that is to watch each and every trade of every stock in the markets and notify our customers about profitable activity so you can be the first to act.
Trade Ideas Today
Now established for over 10 years, Trade Ideas LLC caters to investors, traders, and market professionals in over 65 countries. Both Scottrade and E*TRADE license Trade Ideas proprietary technology for their premium trading platforms. We have fully automated trading available through Lightspeed and Interactive Brokers.
Today, we watch the US and Canadian equity markets and unstructured data including social media to uncover even more predictive relationships. Many educators like TodayTrader, Bulls on Wall St., and TradeCrushers use Trade Ideas as part of their education curriculum to teach students market dynamics.
The market is just starting to catch on to what Trade Ideas technology has to offer and we could not be more excited about the future of our business!
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I must tell you of all the software that I have used over the last 20 years trading stocks yours is simply the best. I got tons of value for my money as a subscriber. And I thank you and your whole team for that.
I’m a fairly long-time user of your alerts. Probably won’t need the intro session.I’m still kicking myself for not getting OddsMaker months ago, BTW.No more spreadsheets and trying to visualize an inhuman amount of data.So far OddsMaker is half paid for from profits from one day’s use.
The Management Team
Our managing partners
Daniel Mirkin
Senior Managing Partner, CEO
Dan Mirkin has been a pioneer and driver of new technology in the financial marketplace for over 15 years. After graduating from the University of Texas, Dan Mirkin started a hedge fund specializing in active trading of index derivatives. In 1995 Dan Mirkin became entrenched in the Direct Access trading technology revolution. He contributed to the design and testing of CyberTrader, the first commercially viable Direct Access trading platform which was acquired by Charles Schwab for $400 million USD in 2000. In 1998 Mr. Mirkin founded FutureTrade Technologies in an effort to bring Direct Access technology to the institutional market. In April 2000 FutureTrade raised an initial amount of $4 million USD in venture capital. As CEO Dan Mirkin developed the software and business infrastructure that allowed FutureTrade to successfully port their Java based equities platform to the institutional market place. In March of 2002 FutureTrade successfully completed a $17 million USD round of financing lead by Menlo Ventures.
In June of 2002 Dan Mirkin left FutureTrade to start Trade Ideas LLC. Having spent nearly 3 years talking with hedge fund managers about what makes them trade, Dan saw the need for a next generation research tool. A tool that automated what successful traders and portfolio managers did throughout the day and continuously brought important market events to users’ attention. Trade Ideas streaming alerts allow users to monitor vast amounts of market data in real-time without constraining system resources. Anyone that has a browser and internet access can immediately start using the product.
Philip Smolen
Senior Managing Partner, CTO
Philip Smolen holds an MS and BS in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. Philip brings over 19 years experience building mission critical systems that rely on real-time data. Prior to forming Trade-Ideas, Philip worked as Senior Software Architect at FutureTrade Technologies, a maker of Direct Market Access trading software servicing hedge funds and institutions. Before joining FutureTrade, Mr. Smolen worked at Lockheed Martin designing laser guided defense systems for the U.S. military.
In June of 2002 Philip Smolen left FutureTrade to start Trade Ideas LLC. Since then, Phil has been the architect of the Trade Ideas database and real-time search technology. In 2002 he began designing a system that watched and recorded all trades for all stocks, ETF’s, and options traded on the various exchanges. Trade Ideas software not only watches and records all trades in our custom database, but it also keeps statistical real-time baselines on different behaviors such as volatility, volume, and direction on multiple time frames at the same time.
David M. Aferiat
Managing Partner
David brings more than 15 years of experience in trading, consulting, software, utilities, capital markets, and consumer product industries. Working with senior officers and key decision makers in the boardroom, finance, HR, marketing and trading functions, he has advised both public and privately held companies with revenues ranging from $20 million to $14 billion. Work at Trade-Ideas taps experience in business development, customer acquisition and retention, corporate strategy as well as energy trading and marketing. David holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Economics and French from the University of Texas at Austin and a Masters of Business Administration degree from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.
In seven years Trade Ideas has grown to over 50,000 accounts in 19 different countries. Hedge funds, Asset Managers, Institutions, Online Brokers, and direct access traders use the software as a premier idea generation, risk management, and decision support tool.
Brad Williams
Managing Partner
Brad Williams is the Chief Operations Officer and Managing Partner at Trade Ideas LLC. Brad brings over 20 years of experience managing financial technology. Starting in the late 90’s Brad was part of the Direct Access revolution that allowed individuals to have the same access to the markets as market makers.
Finding success trading and consulting Brad founded Future Trade Technologies to create a Java based trading platform for hedge funds. Future Trade Technologies was a Palo Alto backed venture that raised more than $50 million dollars and was eventually sold to Interactive Brokerage in 2007.
In 2003 Brad and the original founders of Future Trade Technologies, left the firm to start Trade Ideas. Since starting Trade Idea, Brad has helped grow the business from a small startup to the company that is recognized as the global leader in streaming idea generation, strategy development and artificial intelligence. Today, Trade Ideas serves over 15 thousand clients in more than 75 countries.
Contact Trade Ideas
Phone: (619) 821-8198
Fax: (951) 346-3669
Email: info@trade-ideas.com
Instant Message: “TradeIdeasAssist“, “SupprtTradeIdeas“, “MariTI10“, “D TradeIdeas” or “TradeIdeasHelp“
Support Forum: Trade-Ideas Support Forum
Trade Ideas, LLC
315 S. Coast Hwy 101, Suite U-138
Encinitas, CA 92024