Bad Trader App Launches Alternative Trader Network

CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–IG US Holdings, Inc., the parent company of tastylive and tastytrade, announces today the launch of the Bad Trader app, a community focused on financial markets that embraces speculation. By building a community around experimentation and the inevitable blunders that come with it, Bad Trader aims to help people better understand how to take calculated risks and when it may be appropriate to take them.

Now available for iOS and Android, Bad Trader offers daily hosted livestreams where young, but knowledgeable traders drive interactive conversations around markets, trading, sports, politics, and other things that probably matter. Bad Trader users can hop into chat to roast their friends for their impulsive decisions, as well as complete daily tasks, earn badges, and accumulate in-game points. Bad Trader users can also connect to their tastytrade account through a simplified, intuitive, and tasteful neon interface, with the plan to include connections to additional brokers in future releases.

Created to give users a fun, educational, and experiential introduction to risk, community engagement for young investors and traders is at the core of Bad Trader’s mission. According to survey data collected in November and December 2022, 41% of Gen Z and 38% of Millennials surveyed report owning individual stocks. Social media is the top source of financial information for Millennial and Gen Z investors, with 42% of Millennials and nearly half of Gen Z (48%) learning about investing and financial topics from YouTube and apps such as Instagram, TikTok, twitter and Reddit.¹ These trends have inspired Bad Trader’s novel approach on what a finance app should feel like: a community-driven platform centered around watching entertaining, knowledgeable traders and learning from each other’s mistakes.

“I got into trading because the internet is dead and the planet’s on fire. Trading is exciting, it’s challenging, it’s a great way to stay informed on current events without slipping into existential dread… it also teaches great lessons and it’s much more fun with friends,” said Julia Spina, the 28-year-old CEO of Bad Trader and author of The Unlucky Investor’s Guide to Options Trading, an Amazon best seller in multiple categories.

“I hate giving quotes like this, write whatever you want,” said Tom Sosnoff, founder and CEO of tastylive and the visionary behind Bad Trader. “Also, go download Bad Trader.”

Click here to access videos and photography of the Bad Trader app.

About Julia Spina

Julia Spina is the CEO of Bad Trader and author of The Unlucky Investor’s Guide to Options Trading. Julia holds BS degrees in Engineering Physics and Applied Mathematics from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, as well as a MS in Physics with a research focus in quantum optics and information. Julia transitioned into finance in 2020 and worked as a quantitative researcher and content creator alongside Tom Sosnoff at the financial network tastylive. Published in 2022, The Unlucky Investor’s Guide is an Amazon best seller in multiple categories, and Julia has spent the last year promoting her book at talks across the country on tastylive’s “Bad Trader” tour. Now, with several years of experience in investor education and a deep passion for memes, Julia is focused on building up the Bad Trader community.

About Bad Trader

Bad Trader is owned by IG US Holdings, Inc., parent company of tastytrade, an online retail brokerage firm, tastylive, a financial content and education platform, tasty Software Solutions, LLC, and a subsidiary of IG Group Holdings PLC (LON:IGG), a global fintech company that provides award-winning products, platforms and access to ~19,000 financial markets to investors around the world.

¹https://www.cfainstitute.org/-/media/documents/article/industry-research/Gen_Z_and_Investing.pdf

Contacts

Laura Hayes, laura.hayes@ig.com