Innovative Social Trading Platform Boosted by Data Service

Trading is one of the niches where flexibility and adaptability to constantly changing environments are among the most important factors leading to success. And with the growth of social media influence, many trading market players have thought about the way to convert social media platforms into powerful and helpful instruments. Our client has decided to turn this idea into reality and build a social trading platform — a solution that would combine features of the trading system and social media.Today social trading is a pretty popular concept, with many brokers offering their own software. But at the time our client contacted Light IT Global with a social trading platform development request, there were not many examples of such solutions on the international market, and not many IT crews had the experience to deliver such a complex project.Light IT Global was trusted to create a web-based platform that would include multiple mandatory and quite complex features. It should not only analyze data in real time, providing the user with up-to-date info at all times, but it also should instantly update the social media feed and provide a cross-posting option, as well as allow the users to work with several different trading instruments.

This complex and challenging project required a lot of customization and outside-the-box thinking to successfully bring to life all of the elements our client was willing to incorporate into the social trading platform. As the trader had to have access to both market data and social media feeds which had to be updated in real-time, Light IT Global utilized asynchronous programming. This method allowed the processing of several tasks concurrently, which is essential for ensuring the overall stability of the system and providing the user with the quickest access to relevant data. To keep the social media-related functionality handy for traders, we focused on forming themed feeds that would display emerging trends, breaking news, and the experts’ analysis. A custom Gevent-based API safeguarded the system’s ability to perform all the needed concurrency and network-related tasks. The introduction of the FIX protocol simplified the platform’s communication with different financial data sources. And upon the integration of Yahoo Finance, the users got access to a wide range of in-depth analysis and investment tools.The trading part of the system was customized by Light IT Global as well. Examples are liquidity pools and hedging solutions implementation.

Once Light IT Global has finished the work on the project, the customer has received a fully-functional web-based agile social trading platform.The software provides the trader with all the required information related to trading, investment, and finances and does so in real time. The most important news and trends are delivered to the user via a Twitter feed. At the same time, the trader can not only review the signals that are being shared with them but also share their own opinions using the crossposting feature. The functionality typical for a social media platform, such as likes and comments, is also available. The feed allows the users to see not only the posts or links shared by others but also view their trades and either copy them or contra copy. Contra copy trading is a unique technique created by our client that allows the trader to do the opposite of what a chosen user is doing and counter their trades. The variety of accessible trading instruments includes shares, indices, commodities, and FX pairings with real-time trades opened and closed. The users can review the trading charts and the price change, mark their favorite pairs, and observe all of the changes in real time.

Once the project was successfully implemented, it caught the audience’s interest with an elegant, user-friendly interface, a wide range of trading instruments, and a “contra copy trading,” feature, as most of the social trading platforms only allow for standard copy trading.This innovation, paired with the platform’s user-friendliness and multifunctionality, helped our client get the required recognition from the media and attract the audience. As this social trading solution was one of the first on the international market, both professional traders and beginners were excited to try it out.The monetization strategy chosen by our client allowed getting the most out of that advantage. The platform was completely free to try out, the only charges that were introduced included overnight/rollover fees.