Episode 14: Anton Sokolov - Marketing Manager, Brokeree Solutions

Welcome to Finance Feeds Podcasts. Finance feeds is the world's premier interactive forks industry new source, providing the latest insights and current affairs from within the online trading industry worldwide. Enjoy our latest podcast episode. It's episode 14. My name is Nikolai Isaiv. I'm editor-in-chief of Finance Feeds. Joining me today is Anton Sokolov, who is marketing manager at Brokary Solutions. Hi Nikolai. Anton, hi. Welcome to our head me. Did I get I got the title right? Yeah, marketing manager. Yeah. All good. Perfect. Perfect. So Anton, you and I have actually traveled to quite a few events this year, industry events. I wanted to find out from you which ones you found the most memorable and what are your impressions of the key themes in our industry so far as we close out 2022. While in terms of events, it was quite a magical, right? I think we're originally planned like to attend like six events and then it ended up been almost like 13 to 12 twice as much. So yeah, been a lot of traveling for our team and me included. Yeah, in terms of of the events, I just am a big fan of what Ultimate Team Tech is doing, right? The IFXX for Finance, London Sunnet. Those are always great events which you do expect great things and they're always successful. There were a few of like new promoters and like new organizers popping up here and there. We do monitor the market and try to get in touch with them, but yeah, in terms of the ones to visit and definitely IFXX. So looking forward actually in this January, right? Next January. Yeah, it seems like we're only going to get a very short break between 2022 conferences and 2023 conferences, but yeah, it looks like IFXX pulled you by in January is going to be the next big event. So we are already wishing you success. What's there at that event coming up? Well, I mean, it has been prepared for us even sooner than we had prepared a lot of the Sunnet. So yeah, all the designs, everything was set up already, everything was pre-ordered and pre-booked. So well, I think we're already preparing for may or something like that. That's very cool. That means you guys are very, very well, very well organized. You know, to me, it seems like the events in Dubai do have a certain caliber, I would say, as opposed to events in London or let's say Asia, for example, it seems like Dubai has established itself as the new financial hub for many firms, whether it's Forex, whether it's crypto, whether it's many different other things, including FinTech. Is that your impression as well? I'd say so, yeah, and it actually happened quite quickly, right? We had a very long break, like, pandemic-wise, right? And only now we can see Asia to slowly get into, like, back to business, but Dubai, they just opened up the door and business flooded. And I think it's, it was a very smart decision on their part. And yeah, I agree. Actually, yeah, I think it's like about three events which we definitely visit every year in Dubai at this point. And there are a few new ones which we are looking forward to actually next year. So, um, stay tuned, I guess, but yeah, Dubai is doing well, and they're actually doing quite well in terms of regulating, right? They started to give, like, accepting new brokerages and giving up licenses. So, yeah, the market is developing quite rapidly in, in, in Manor region. Yeah, definitely. Listen, I also wanted to say congratulations on winning the Best Emerging FinTech award at the recent Finance Magnets London Summit. This was actually a few, a few weeks ago. Obviously, we were there together. I wanted to ask, what does this award mean for brokerry and for you personally? Well, actually, it's, it's been great to receive the award. First of all, because usually you don't expect, right? The company gets nominated here and there, but then once you get the award is like, it's, it's, it's nice thing to have, right? And we've been congratulated by partners and clients who, who are actually coming, coming out and saying, yeah, we voted for you. Good luck, guys. And from the company, it does mean sort of recognition, I'd say, right? For, we've been on the market for quite a while. Actually, it's, it's our ninth year this year. So, getting the, the award has just the confirmation that we're doing things right. And, yeah, and the last year is, oh, this year, I guess. I was still in 2022. The year has been, we have been growing quite rapidly in terms of employee count, in terms of new opportunities, new markets. And, yeah, I hope the things continue to continue this way for the next year. Awesome. So, I wanted to talk about some sort of industry trends that have been impacting brokers that use, uh, meditator platforms like MT4 and MT5. As you well know, medical, it's recently, released an update to, it's the web version of MT5. In order to allow traders to continue using Apple I/O's devices, right? To, to, to trade it in, you know, on their mobile devices, using, using a meta platform. Do you see, do you see the solution as a stop gap measure? Or do you think that this is enough, you know, as a, as a long-term solution that's, traders will be satisfied with, you know, going forward in terms of having the ability to trade on mobile meditators? Well, I, I think the, the ban itself came, came like out of nowhere. Nobody was expecting such harsh meritors. Of course, we can see the reasoning behind it, right? And I, I believe, meta quotes confirm that they were in, in talks with the Apple prior to, to it happening. But, the ban itself was, was like, maybe not very thought through quite well in terms of how it affected the whole industry, right? Because meta trader is the prominent. I think they still have more than 70% share of the market in terms of trading apps. And just like removing everything, yes, of course, it didn't affect the, the existing clients. It only affected the new ones who didn't download the app in time. And as it comes to the web trader, they always had the web trader, right? It's just that they redesigned it, reworked it to, to, like, to introduce new design and to optimize performances. And here I can actually answer from, from different sides, right? From, like, as a, as a user of mobile apps in general. And then as a technology provider from the development standpoint. And if we look at it from technology perspective, developing a web application is actually so much easier, right? Because, like, CSS 3 has come a long way. And you can just create responsive interfaces, which will work on every design, no matter desktop, tablet, whatever, even microwave, right? It does matter. You can just, you can just, yeah, I understand what you mean. Yeah. And you just develop one product basically, one application. That's why we see quite a lot of companies introducing their new products only web-based. But when we look at things from the user standpoint, right? Some processes, you would prefer to have an app, right? Even if you are using the app just once a week. I mean, of course, training wise, it's much more frequent. And we can, we can speak about why and what are the reasons to use the app later on. But, for example, like, when you're flying, I know I can download the QR code or like, boarding pass on my phone or open it up through browser. But I would still prefer to have an app. I don't know. It's like, I just trust that the app will be more secure. It will have more features in terms of notification, like, pushing. And then if I close the browser, I won't receive those push notifications. So there are some, yeah, I see what you mean. And in this regard, if we get back to the web application, right? Having the web application, or basically what is the reason to have application in first trade, right? If you speak about retail trading or trading in general, having desktop app was always the way to go. Having multiple monitors was always the way to go because you, you need to monitor news, you need to monitor what's happening on the market at this particular time. You need to monitor a couple of, I don't know, Twitter feeds, channels, charts, charts. And then to make an analysis, I mean, I can't imagine a person just picking up the phone and doing technical analysis on the phone. It's not happening. You still need the biggest screen, right? And in this regard, having this functionality or this reason for the web app, yes, it makes sense. And the only thing white traders will prefer to have the mobile app is to monitor what's happening with their positions or let's say they everybody uses like telegram or Facebook communities for the social or like for signal training signals right ideas and they get those ideas and they just they receive them in telegram you receive it on your phone in the group and you just need to react quickly you open up an app on the same phone and you just open up the the trade risk wise of course there are some concerns and whom you trust and what but the convenience and having easy access I just can't see it with the with the web trader so I think it's it's a solution for now and it will suffice and clients can still use it right but for some things you would still prefer having a mobile app just because it just faster you trust it more I mean no I I I agree with you because again I don't I don't necessarily use a meditator right I don't I don't trade at this point in time but I I kind of echo your sentiment there in terms of using other other apps other businesses on your phone like your analogy with a plane ticket or a boarding pass is actually very interesting because because we all travel a lot to you know like we said industry events and and you're right there is a way for you to get your boarding pass usually the phone asks you if you want it in your wallet in your apple of wallet right for example and I I would say that I'm you know to your analogy I'm always like well okay but I would rather access it from the app of the airline that I'm flying because like you said the perception is that the information that we are going to get through that app is going to maybe be a little bit more accurate than it is through a browser version of the airline's website for example or just that or just that boarding pass that it was electronically issued to me but it was issued to me at a particular time in between it being issued and my flight leaving there could be some changes like the gate might change or the departure time might change or whatever it may be and I feel like that's important information that I would like to see as soon as as soon as as soon as possible do you think also there is a and that maybe perhaps from a tech from the technical side of things I don't know if you are involved with your colleagues in studying things like performance issues I mean I would venture to guess that using a browser version of a trading platform in your apple device there could be some performance implications in terms of how quick it is in terms of functionality as opposed to a native standalone application I don't know if you have any thoughts on any thoughts on that. Yeah absolutely native applications would always give developers more freedom in terms of optimizing it right because you are working directly with the operating system whereas when you when you work with web application we tend to work in like restraints of the browser itself and like I don't know if you use Chrome on your on your PC on your laptop on your Mac right you you will know how much resources it requires just to run and if we couple it with the performance and like heavy performance of the web application itself there are so much things where might go wrong but developing natively it is quite expensive right because now instead of supporting just one application you need to support at least two right Android and iOS at least those two and then if we speak about Android apps there are so many different devices with ISO like Apple devices iPhones you you have all the knowledge you you can like get your app right the first time and and supported that way but with Android devices you would need to test it on so many different devices because I don't know it just requires it just requires much more things to do and I mean I know there are some technologies which allow web applications to run faster they use like WebAssembly like for gaming stuff you can actually game through browser window but always going native would make more sense it just a matter of how much resources we are willing to invest to support all those apps because you don't just release an app if you if new feature comes up in the train platform you need to have it in five different places and it requires different teams different expertise different optimization so I would say it's mostly the the problem of optimizing and resource management in terms of how much you invest into into support it. Would you agree like my opinion is that this may be a good solution in terms of the update to the to the web version of MT5 but my personal opinion is I think medicality is still going to work towards you know resolving these issues that they may have with with Apple and actually getting the app back into back into the app store because ultimately I mean I think I think that needs to be the end goal at the end of the day but partially based on on what you said you still at the end of the day you still might want to have a native app and you know there's obviously thousands and thousands of traders who still have the mobile app on their phone because again they downloaded it and began using it prior to prior to what happened but I would also say that you know arguably the people who don't have access to the mobile app now these are all new traders new users right people who are just getting into the market and just beginning to work with whichever broker as they want to trade with right and I would I would argue that the majority of these people are demographically younger than the thousands and thousands of traders who have already been successful using the app for years and so these younger people expected technology to work quickly expect the technology to be quite easy to use and so some of them from a usability perspective might find this web version of empty five as being more of a stopgap like I said in the beginning of my in the beginning of my question kind of like okay I understand that this is what that this is what I have to use today but I would like at some point to see you know a native version of this type of trading platform be available to me and I'm you know obviously we don't have statistics we don't have information these customers can comment and contact their broker and you know ask questions or give comments or even well yeah basically you know contact support and perhaps say hey you know well this is cool or this is okay but I you know what I'd be able to trade on a native app at at some point soon I would venture to guess you guys brokerry are more involved in this than someone like us like finance feeds but I would venture to guess that if there are clients who are giving such feedback that feedback ultimately might come from the broker to you to from your clients to you in terms of hey guys you know this is sort of what we're seeing in hearing and kind of our hopes or expectations from the brokers themselves perhaps is that you know that the native app will return at some point or at least there is sufficient demand to get a native app back on the app store no absolutely agree and actually I think it's there's no any similar case like that where we have one technology provider having one application and through which application you can access thousands of companies which then have millions of users and everything was just in one app and you just don't see that often right usually what companies do and what we actually observe in the market with other trading platforms they would quite label the solution in such a way that it is uploaded through the like development developers account of of a particular company of a brokerage and then the app will be branded with logos with scholars with whatever branding is for for for the brokerage and it will be uploaded through their separate account and if something goes wrong and if clients carry on with some feedback about the app about the features or make complaints to the to the app store right everything will fall down to the brokerage which is ultimately responsible for how they treat the clients right and they might not be responsible for the app behavior but well that's usually the better way and if we actually look at the policies of app store it is quite tricky to to have the app in general published there right they have very strict policies on how to approve it and but at the end of the day as you actually as you mentioned the the newer generation and if you look at the researchers the research done by by multiple academics or like regulators right the younger generations they tend to prefer trading apps not just trading in general, but trading app, it has to be an app, it has to be a native app. It has to have certain features, it needs to be accessible, it needs to be convenient, right? And I do believe that somehow they will find a solution to bring it back. And it just, let's hope it happens quicker, right? Because we do observe how brokerages stand to view other platforms at this moment. And I think they are working on it. Well, this actually brings me to my next question, which is, and you mentioned in part, earlier in our discussion that, you know, there's different numbers being thrown around. I don't think anybody knows the exact figure besides medical, it's themselves. But they have a huge market share, right? Arguably, you mentioned something like 70% of the market of forward trading platforms. But at the same time, you know, one of the thoughts or feedback that I saw from some of our colleagues in the industry that attended the London conference a few weeks ago, was that, you know, a lot of the other platform providers, the non meta FinTech providers, obviously got a lot of inbound interest from brokerages right after this situation transpired. Obviously, some of them will probably gain some new business from brokerages, right, as a result. But the overarching sort of thought is that, sure, these other platform providers will gain some traction in terms of market share. But ultimately, the meta quotes will still continue to be the dominant player in terms of trading platforms for brokers specifically within FX and CFD industry. Do you agree with this assumption or with this thought? I would say yes. There are actually, like, different perspectives we can look at the popularity of meta trader. One, which is usually thrown around as like why meta trader four actually is still quite popular, right? One with, well, we already have meta trader five, which we didn't develop on, was so much longer. And it actually supports like multi-asset processes or multi-asset trading, which was not initially the plan for meta trader four, like cryptocurrency is coming up. They're so much easier to start working on meta trader five then, than to try to do mental way into like configure meta trader four to work with it. You can still do it, but meta trader five was planned ahead to support all different upcoming like instruments. And one of the arguments we hear is that traders don't want to transfer because they so used to meta trader four, how it works, like they have expert advisors, they have different robots, algo trading, and those are not yet transferred to meta trader five, that's why we're using it. But actually the other part of the business is that dealing desks, right, or like risk management teams, liquidity management teams, those are the old guys. And for them to transfer their knowledge to meta trader five, because even though the trading platforms are developed by the same company, the original idea behind meta trader four and meta trader five are completely different, right? And everything which was not in place for meta four is now in place for meta trader five. So all the different processes on all the different like new answers of how to work with, they need to be shared and basically learn new for the for the old teams, the ones who used to work with meta trader four, right? And in terms of the capabilities of like back office or like the whole infrastructure other than the trading platform interface or the marketing side of the business, the industry has used so much to the processes, how it was done on meta trader. And switching or introducing a new platform, it's not a matter of integrating, you know, it with CRM, which is usually they're already integrated or like, I'm marketing it to traders, it is the actual back office and risk management part of it. And this is where the most headache comes from for for the brokerages, I would say. And that's why I do believe that meta traders still continue and will continue to be the larger player in terms of trading platforms. That's an interesting point that you make in terms of these, these, I would maybe we can call them structural differences between empty four and empty five. Because I had experienced a little bit with this when when meta trader five rolled out many, many years ago, it's been many, many years since a meta trader five was launched, soft launch, let's say, but then brokers, you know, began to actually use them with live clients and things like that. I just remember that one of the issues was and you kind of just brought this up is that empty five has a lot of these internal components like CRM, like mark things that can be utilized for marketing or tracking trader behavior and things like that. Historically, in empty four, these were all outsourced in the sense that there was just a connection to a legacy or another third party system, which was an outside system. And that's how data and meta trader and those systems interacted. I remember when empty five came about, one of the pitches that I saw and heard from meta quotes was that you don't need all of these integrations anymore. You could essentially do a lot of this work directly inside the meta trader terminal itself, right, or within the meta trader ecosystem. And I remember colleagues saying, okay, that's great, but we spent so much time and resources building these old legacy connections and these legacy connections work quite well for us to move to to this new ecosystem and bring everything in there actually would entail either the same amount of work or even more work and it's not a something that could be done very quickly or overnight, it would still take a lot of work. And I think perhaps, and I don't know if you agree with me, I think that's perhaps meta trader four is still alive in the sense that it's still a fully functioning trading system because I remember over the years there were efforts by meta quotes to essentially tell brokers, listen, we're going to sunset meta trader four, we're not going to just radically stop servicing brokers who are using empty four, but we're going to what we're going to do is we're going to sunset some of the updates and some of the development that normally was previously done for meta trader four to, you know, for upkeep on the technical side, I guess these are things that, you know, I'm not too well versed in, but the impression was that, you know, they they wanted to, they wanted brokers to gradually shift over into empty five and that didn't necessarily happen over the years, there's still obviously a lot of companies using empty four, the evidence is that empty four is still supported by meta quotes, it's still a fully functioning older legacy style system, I know I'm saying legacy, but that's just to compare it to, you know, empty five, which is the newer version. So it seems like there's some of these caveats that that we have in the industry that are playing or have played a role so far. Well, yeah, I mean, with meta trader in general, as you mentioned, there has been so much like so much development done and so many third party solutions are available, which actually makes it very good platform in terms of being able to find unit to your specific needs, and ultimately that's what we observe, right? We have so much difference here and providers already on the market, and then it's, it's not very uncommon for a brokerage to start and develop their own system in place, just because the way they, you are the way they used, used to have their back office processes set up, or the way they chose their technology stack, or like infrastructure, it requires them to do some sort of development, and if that development is difficult to do with the third parties technology provider, then they will start doing by themselves. And just because meta trader has been on the market for so long, and they provide those server side APIs, right? The programming language, or like the protocol, how programs can communicate between each other. They allow so much flexibility in terms of making the solution or the platform work for you the way you wanted to work, which might not be the case with the newer platforms which are coming up, because usually they saw how the meta trader was doing it, they decided, okay, we understand that these parts of the, like things like seed trader, right? It was built that way originally. They've looked at meta trader for, and they noticed that, okay, these things are not as modern, or like this can be done different way, or like here we would like to focus on this instead of that. And that's how they originated, right? Now of course they, they went the different paths, and they still have the different differences, but originally speaking, it's just the, they saw and they decided to improve upon it. Whereas with meta trader, they allowed those customizations to be done around the platform. We try to think it's very, very convenient, very good way to do business, right? Yeah, of course, and put it in the description. I think for someone like a C-Trader, that's the natural evolution of any business, especially when it's in niche business, let's say there's one or two companies doing it, there's obviously competitors come into the fold in any industry, really, because they analyze and see what someone else did and sort of see what the shortfalls may have been, or maybe they have something that just works better in terms of some specific solutions. And so, you know, the healthy competition, in a sense, is what I would call it. And there's obviously many other different platform providers out there as well in terms of, you know, and we all know these companies, they're arguably our friends in the industry, you know, some of them provide solutions which are built from the ground up based on your needs and others basically provide something that's already been developed and packaged up and sort of you're getting a package solution which you can customize to your needs, but a lot of the work has already been done for you, right, in a sense. So, there's always, I would say that in our industry, there's an ample amount of solutions that you can use based on, you know, based on your different needs. Anton, I also wanted to ask you, I think we discussed this a little bit. Actually, we discussed this quite a few times, I think with you and we've seen each other this year. And this is something quite new. So, the FCA, the financial conduct authority in the UK, they recently came out with a statement regarding their concerns with what it perceives as so-called gamification of trading on the part of, you know, UK regulated brokers and exchanges. And I think since that statement came out, there was also a letter that someone from the FCA sent directly to the CEOs of UK, I believe CFD brokers. It was quite a long letter. I didn't necessarily have a chance to read all of it, but I believe some of it touched upon the points that were from the statement in the sense that where there are concerns about the way that the trading services are being marketed by UK firms and things like that. And it didn't necessarily, this letter that I saw, it didn't necessarily spell out any kind of sanctions or, you know, actions that the FCA would take, but the language in the way it was written, it seemed to me personally to indicate that perhaps later on down the road in 2023 or later, the FCA may be changing some of its regulations, some of its requirements for the way brokers actually present their services to traders or to new clients and the way that perhaps even their front-end platforms are set up. And the last thing I wanted to say about this is this topic has actually been discussed widely in the United States here, where platforms like Robin Hood, which I'm sure you know of, and others like Weeble have arguably gamified trading. I mean, if you look at their front-ends, a lot of them, like we just discussed, you know, the mobile version or native apps for trading on Apple, you know, if you look at these companies' apps, and you download them, you start using them, you could see that they're not tailored to some sophisticated investor. They are tailored to someone who may be a millennial, someone who is well-versed in what gaming is. They've tried to play video games or games on their phone before, and so it's very easy for such new traders to get very quickly accustomed to this this type of trading app and, you know, begin investing money or trading on the markets. I guess I wanted to know, you know, what your perception of this is, specifically what's happening in the UK, and sort of the whole phenomenon of gamification, which really started, you know, I would argue around two years ago. And does this have implications in the long run? Does this have implications for companies that might even be your customers who may have apps or some other sort of trading front-ends that possibly would need to be changed or modified or anything like that? Well, they are actually quite a few points to touch upon in here. Have you actually had a chance to look through the research on which they based their statement on the letter, right? I did not. I did not take a deep dive into it, but if you did, please, please fill us in. Yeah, I was just curious to see. And I have always been a fan of academic research and just the method of knowledge behind it, right? And interestingly in life, when I originally heard the statement, like read the statement, right? I thought of maybe slightly different gamification elements, right? Or like the way it was phrased in there, it seemed like a witch hand, right? Or right, we need to ban everybody, everybody, everything. That's one of the legitimate perceptions for market participants. But once I started reading the research and what they're based on, the examples were actually quite alarming to me, I would say. So the examples of the apps they used, they mostly spoke about the notification like celebratory achievements, right? And it's one thing to celebrate achievement, right? You made a great deal, all right? Well done. But the way it was phrased in the apps, it was like, yeah, you leveled up, you belong on the trading floor. So instead of just celebrating the achievement, they gave maybe in some way false affirmation, or like, which will boost up the confidence of a trader, which as you mentioned, I usually, the younger audience, right? I think the average, or like, modal age in the, they used in the sample was, well, they're on 27% and in Robinhood, the average age of their client is 31. So the guys younger than the tech, basically millennials and Gen Z are the ones that use it. And they did actually show in the way, like in their research that, that this kind of confidence was already present in those generations, right? So people are already quite confident in their, like, they think that they know how to do, how to choose. And there's another actually paper on self-directed investors, also quite an interesting read, I would say, for the weekend to come. And, yeah, basically, they were researching different approaches to trading, like the, the more conservative, like conservative approach, which usually was shown by the people who had education or had, like, graduate level education or, like, majors in finance, economics, business, those who already had some knowledge about the market, right? And those were usually the more conservative ones, the, and showed higher risk aversion, whereas the newer ones who had no previous trading experience, they did not receive the knowledge, but they were quite confident. And the gamification, which boosts this kind of confidence, I actually find it concerning, right? When we speak about gamification, which, yeah, I'll get to, like, basically gamification in my understanding, right? It's very powerful tool, and it's a great tool, when used properly. And one of the based gamification shines is through education, right? That's why we see dual-ingua apps or something like that, basically, like, chasing you to carry on learning the new language. And gamification elements and education, they work perfectly well. But when we start to boost the confidence of the traders without actually educating them, and that's one of the concerns, and actually, on the roadmap for the FCA for years to come, is increasing that level of education among the traders, among investors, among newcomers to the industry. So, yeah, basically, how I view it, when we use gamification, in terms of educating clients, how to use the platform, teaching them how to trade, about different things, and everything, it tends to work out well. But when we start to go the, you know, the lauser route of trying to push them and say, yeah, you're doing great, carry on when they're not doing great. I think there was actually one of the, one of the notifications they used in the example in the research was nerves of steel, stocks are going strong, for the clients who were keeping the deposition longer. Which, oh, so this is, these are actual messages. Yes, so it like broke. You will have like a gift popping up on your phone, with the statement, like, yeah, you'll leveled up, you're doing well. And it does sound quite, quite scary, right? If we speak about this kind of research, yeah, I could see, yes, I could see how this could be, and even in their case where they had the sample rate, I think of 625 different traders, of different groups, different like proficiencies, they found that the users that were influenced by game find experience, they would delay and close their positions. later than planned, basically exiting their market and increasing their risks ultimately. And this is where the concerns of FCA come from, is decrease in risk aversion just because trade is feeling overconfident in their trading abilities. And I do find it quite alarming in this sense. But I think the other part of the question was, do you think it will affect our clients, we do have a product social trading, right, which does revolve around clients being in the group or like seeing a leaderboard of different traders, of different signal providers, money managers, how do you call it, does matter. And this leaderboard is based on rent, right? And originally you would think that they're connected, but I think that you used in one of the examples is that part of the gamification, or like they view it as part of gamification, like the leaderboard like most traded stocks or like rising stocks, which were you, like they have always been on the trading platforms. It's nothing new and I don't think like it can influence a decision, right? You see that these are the rising stocks and I need to pick it up or like these are the falling ones I need to hoard on them and then they will rise someday. But it's not as alarming as the examples they used in the research. That's what I was trying to say, yeah. I think you bring up some very important points and I would argue that, you know, when you bring up the example of someone who had a successful trade and essentially got a message from their broker saying, you know, great job, you know, you now qualify or makes it sound like, you know, you could actually be an actual trader on the trade desk or on the trading floor, right? I think you're right in that that does sound a bit alarming because if we look at regulations, if we just look at the markets in general, Forex and CFD markets, I mean, the number one thing that everybody needs to be aware of if they're trading on a demo count or an alive account, any positive trading results that you may have does not mean that they are going to continue in the future. I think that's one of the most critical disclaimers that's required by regulators to be displayed on broker's websites globally, right, whether it's the UK or the United States or elsewhere. So if you're telling someone that just had a successful trade, no matter how big or small that trade was, maybe they made only a few bucks, but you're telling them, hey, you know, you did a great job, so, you know, now, you know, you might qualify for something or just to give you more self confidence, that self confidence does not necessarily translate into more profitable trades in the future. And I think that's a pretty important point. And if someone understands the regulatory side of things or the compliance side of things in terms of what regulators constantly demand that brokers put on their websites in terms of disclosures, disclaimers, warnings to traders, it makes a whole lot of sense for the FDA to come out and say, listen, you know, there's deep concerns with what you guys are doing. And there may be some calls to action in the future. I think the other side of this is, you know, I've seen brokers, especially on the marketing side, hire a lot of people from the gaming industry over the last few years, not going to name names or companies or people, you know, but that's something that anyone can go and look up on our industry new sites in terms of, you know, new hires being brought into retail brokerages from firms that are in the sport betting space in the UK or firms that were specifically focused on gaming and things like that. And so it, I would argue perhaps it's a natural progression of things, folks from these similar industries join ours, which is a specifically trading and a regulated industry with respect to what traders are doing in terms of, quote unquote, making bets on where the price of currencies or commodities or other products are going, it would be natural that those folks would modify or alter the marketing message or just the CRM message, quote unquote, just relationship management message with their customers to be more like what they had in, you know, in these other, in these other industries. No, I do agree. And this actually another part of the gamification aspect, right? I think just because, oh well, I mean, according to research, they're not trying to be very genuine. They don't try to generalize. They try to be very specific and how they conduct those research and how it all happens. And gamification in general and trading sounds wrong if we apply it generally, right? But if we start to like do like market segmentation, right? When we start to look at like customer persona and different types of traders, which are actually in that other paper called self-directed investors, also on FCA website, you can find it. And they actually had like three different types of investors and the latter was the gambler. So basically, they do acknowledge it and in the like service, they did like several interviews with different traders and like we're asking them, how did they feel about the gamified experience, how like what was their ideas of trading, what was their plans, whatever. And that was actually something which was boosted up by COVID pandemic when a lot of like sports was not existent. And then we saw that large audience, which are used on betting, right? They saw an outlet in CFDs and FX or like crypto or like or in trading basically as an outlet for their, well, not addiction, but the hobby, I don't know how to call it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just and since those are adults and they know what they're up to. And I do have a few friends from the industry who would basically use the apps for that specific reason. They're like, yeah, I can, I can go to casino or I can go to, to, to battle on my ferry team or I can, I can open up a trade for, for those people, these actions are the same. And if we try to regulate or restrict them from doing that, they will just find another outlet for that. But when we utilize the same, and that's why I don't like, I think that bringing up expertise from different industries is a good thing just because those people know how to work with their audience, right? But when we try to apply the same rules or the same strategies marketing campaigns to the false, which were not coming for that. And we start to like diverge the attention and like manipulate basically, right, in, in a sense, by those features, by those, towards those much risky behavior, I think that's, that's something quite wrong, right? Yeah, it's a problem. And I just hope that regulators will be cautious enough not to affect the whole industry, right? And just be very restrictive like, like Russian regulator being, right? Just banning the industry as a whole and then trying to build it up from scraps. I just hope that they will be more cautious in terms of what kind of restrictions they impose or like what kind of measures they go for. And so basically for, for, for how I view gamification, it would be, as I mentioned, right? I, I do believe and I, I'm strong fan of gamification in education. So I think going for the root of, of projects like FTE more, like prop firms, their model, right? I think you're familiar with it where the traders come in, they start trading on the dam account and they need to show certain results during like the period of the, of the, I don't know, during the period to be like, how to go like upgraded to qualify for the next year, which is actually part of gamification, right? If we just look at it, you, you do something and then you upgrade it to a different tier or you qualify, but by doing so, they actually allow traders to, to trade and you can't get the consistent results without knowing how to do it, right? You can't be lucky for three months in the row. I mean, maybe somebody, but yeah, it's, it's quite unlikely. And using gamification in this sense, or like allowing clients to, or like using gamification on dam accounts, right, allowing them to, to taste the, the way to trade, to learn about the features of the app, to learn about the trading in general, I think it's a very interesting idea and I, I would just like to see more brands pursuing that kind of thing where they use it in a safer way, because like another example I was thinking of, have you seen those quizzes or like questionnaires? that you need to do in order to get qualified to trade more complex instruments. Yes. I know what you mean. Like the professional standard destination in some countries that can. I mean, me having a business degree, I mean, they look like a joke to me. You wouldn't even get those questions me term. Come on. You can get them, I can answer them in any language, even if I don't know the language. Just because I know the market, right? And those questionnaires or surveys or quizzes, they don't seem to me enough. They seem to be just like a right of to say that, yeah, we're doing this to like, okay, we see strong and we're checking out the clients. And I think, again, it's double each sort, right? You do make the process or like onboarding process more complex. Nobody wants to do it because the clients or investors are already quite expensive to get by, right? The amount of market margin you spent acquisition costs. Yeah, it might be double each sort, but at the end, this will feed division of the market, the regulators have, right? A safe environment where the new traders are not pushed towards the complex high risk instruments, leverage the accounts straight away. They need to go through some sort of education and then carry on. So I think the projects like that, well, I'll be happy to hear about the projects like that. And actually one of the one of the project was recently the Danish female trading group or something like they have over 140,000 clients. And they started as a like educational project for like female in the trading investment. And recently the news game that they acquired a trading platform to basically to act as a sort of trading venue for the group they already educated for. So I mean, hearing about the project like that is quite curious to me. And let's hope that gamification stays but evolves to be safer or like those who want trading to be a game, they will always have this kind of attitude no matter what you do, right? And those who didn't want necessarily to be affected by it, they should not be necessarily affected by that if we speak analytically about that. No, no, yeah, I completely agree with you and you bring up a very interesting idea. Demo accounts have been around for ever since live accounts have been around and most large brokers that we know global brokers, they obviously have an education section on their website. Some of them offer all of their education, no resources for free, some of them give them to you for free when you open a live account. And that's sometimes a sales gimmick, which we, which you know, if we're on the marketing side, let's be honest, we all know. But I think that's a very interesting idea. I feel like, you know, if brokers don't do their part, like you said, to control gamification and kind of rein it in, then ultimately the regulator will be forced to put in some sort of restrictions or new requirements where either brokers can't say certain things or again, that they might actually be paralyzed in the sense that they won't be able to offer them any cool or engaging educational stuff going forward because the regulator might say, well, now you can't do, now you can't do any of it. At the same time, what's stopping a regulator from telling brokers that any customer that you onboard to a live account and let them invest real money and trade, whether it's a leveraged account or one to one or two to one or whatever, what's stopping regulators from enforcing a policy that all live traders first need to conduct a certain amount of trades on a demo account. And for example, they have to try to use orders. So, you know, like stop loss orders or take profit orders, whatever you want to call it, you know what I mean? In order to make it mandatory for any new trader to go through this process, so they, they're sort of forced to educate themselves, you know what I mean? In terms of, in terms of the risks of the market and kind of what they're going to be doing on their, on their live account, I think it's an interesting. I'm sure that's not exactly what you meant, but this is an idea that felt in my head as you were talking, forcing, forcing, forcing new traders to go to a demo account, but not just go to a demo account. They have to complete some sort of actions on that demo account in order to quote unquote, graduate from an educational program within a brokerage to then be allowed to open. I actually think there are, there are policies or like measures like that in, I believe in Singapore, maybe they have like mandatory stop loss. And then I do know that the French regulator, they also have the requirement that stop loss is mandatory. It has to be put before the trade is open and like you actually have to do that. And the amount you can lose on the trade should not be more, I think like there are some finicky calculation in terms of how much you can lose and it should be equal to the amount of stop loss. So, a trader before placing in order, they basically specify that, okay, I know that I will lose not more than 100. Yeah, I also like that. I actually think to me a measure in France and I believe in Singapore as well. Which would make sense because Singapore and France, if you compare those jurisdictions to other countries and regions, they are what we would call heavily regulated. There's a lot of regulation on the books, there's a lot of requirements for brokers in terms of business operations and all the things that they have to manage and things like that. Well, let's see what happens in the future. You know, maybe brokers as they say in English have been put on notice. Let's see what happens next year and maybe in the future in terms of what changes this might bring, hopefully might bring. If it doesn't, we'll see, you know, kind of we'll see what happens. Anton, we don't have much time left. I wanted to actually touch upon some personal questions for a bit if you don't mind. Just looking at your LinkedIn profile, I see that you have a very interesting background in terms of your education and experience prior to joining brokerry. Can you tell us kind of if you're for a into, you know, the fintech space and effects and markets happen by chance? Or was it like a culmination of things in your education, in your life, in your career earlier? You know, that kind of everything came together and that's how you joined, joined the industry. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yes, sure, sure. I mean, I think the most interesting part of my, my previous education right is, is education and all refinery or something. I'm like that. Yes, that's one of the things I saw. And I'm like, listen, I have my guests, my guests are always from very diverse backgrounds and you'd be surprised in terms of, you know, what kind of experiences. Or education or just where people grew up, how it had an impact ultimately on a person, you know, coming into our industry. Yeah, sure, sure. No, I mean, the, that part of education like college, college degree, what, what I was called in English. Yeah, it was, it was something that you can go there and then decide what, what you do next. But I did enjoy the studies, right? We had quite a lot of chemistry, different, different types of chemistries like working with the, with the plant and just getting to know the industry. But I actually always knew that I will end up in the business. So I like from, from the very, I mean, in my family, I like, it's quite difficult to find a person who was not an entrepreneur at some point. Basically, my, every relative of mine had some sort of business or have business still. And I always knew that I will be in, in, in commerce, like in, in, in business side of, of things. In terms of finance, I, there was a point in my life where I was interested. I think I was like 14, 15 or something when I was interested in, in trading and investing. I was just reading up a lot of stuff and actually like trying like to learn technical analysis and trade up. But I knew that, no, I'm not that, I'm not that proficient in mathematics to, to go for financial route and like for analysis and stuff. So, yeah, I stayed in the marketing and I consider myself to be business student like mentality. I'm always curious about business processes, no matter what they are, just how the businesses work. So I knew that I'll, I'll be in B2B marketing in any industry always. And it just happened to be brokerry, which is a technology provider in B2B space and finance, which all came together quite nicely and all my previous hobbies or my current hobbies, they just blended in and allowed a, yeah, allowed to be here. Have you ever traded yourself before joining brokerry in terms of like, did you ever have a demo account? Oh, demo for sure. And it was actually one of the funny things when I had a demo account, I had a demo account with it. And I like it. a broker, right? And when I joined brokerage, I learned that the broker was a client of brokerage. So I got like a way to actually work with the brokerage or like the founders of the brokerage who brought me to the industry or like, sure, sure. So it was quite interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm guessing you probably had things to say like, hey, well, you know, from a user perspective, because I've used your system. No, actually, yeah, I actually, I found the old demo account report and I shared it with them just like, fun, I gig a lot of things that you participated in with them. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. And the last question I have is I know that now you live in Finland and I wanted to ask you what life there is like, particularly in terms of like, let's say, culture and weather. I mean, you know, just stereotypically, I would think that it gets very, very cold there during the winter. But then I would also think that like, Sauna's and the culture of going to Sauna when it's cold in the winter is something that's might be a popular activity there. I could be wrong. I'm, you know, these are all just stereotypes from me being an American. Well, but I wanted to see kind of, yeah, kind of what's the experience living? Well, I do enjoy it. I always enjoy it called the climates and, yeah, it does get cold. Where, like, I mean, in parts of Russia, it also does get cold. And I get cold too. I mean, what can you do? But I always enjoy it. And actually, like, still to this day, every, every time I see the first snow cover, the, the floor, I'm so excited. Like, I'm popped up. Yeah, like, the day is going to be great because just because the snow landed on the, on the grass. Yeah, in terms of Sauna is quite difficult to dispute or like debate any stereotypes because they are in, in every building. And if, if this sauna is not in the building, most likely every apartment will have it. I mean, I live in the apartment. We have sauna in the apartment, so we have personal sauna, right? When I was studying in the, in Lapland, there were sauna for the building, right? You, you, you live in like, sort of dormitory, which is more like apartments, where like multiple people live in their own rooms. But you will have sauna in, in there. And if there are no sauna in the building or in the apartment, you will have like a public sauna nearby. We have one by the lake. So, interesting. And is it something that you, that, you use, that you got used to kind of, I mean, what's the, what's the typical sort of way that you would go about using a sauna? Are you using it daily? No, you usually, usually people will go on Saturdays for, for the sauna. If, if it's like, as a family occasion, right? That's, that's the day where you go to. But public sauna, there are sounders in, like swimming pools, where like all the, all the grumpy grandpas are like pouring water and it gets insanely hot. You're like, you're walking your, your skin starts falling. It's, it's, it's scorchingly hot. But it is a popular activity. I, I would say for all the generation, maybe a bit more popular than for younger, but yeah, people still use it. I, I do like it. I do enjoy it. Just because it's a, it's a way for you to like, like, meditation part of it, right? You, you just see there, you have nothing to do, right? You just, you relax you. What about, what about in the warmer months or in the summer? Um, obviously wintertime, yes. Uh, what, what are things like in the summer? What are people in Finland do usually in terms of, like, outdoor activities, hobbies? Um, I mean, no, hiking by, yeah, finish citizens. And I would say the whole Scandinavia, like Fennos-Candia region, like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland. They are, people here are always used to be outdoors. And it's, it's quite like, basically, what they're thirsty to do, right? So basically on Friday, after work, you won't see any like cars on the parking, just because everybody packs things up and they go, go somewhere to the countryside and, and relax in the nature. So this is the common way to relax. And that's what they're you, they do. And that's why that's one of the parts which I enjoy about living in Finland, right? I live in the city, like small town, but I literally have like, like 10 meters away from me. So you don't have to go for it? Yeah, I mean, you, you just open up a window and you see nature, you see bunnies hopping around, you see, I don't know, foxes, foxes running around, you see birds, you're in the nature. And this is very, very, very, very nice thing to have when you work in like finance and stuff where people expect skyscrapers, like Dubai, all the luxury and stuff which comes with successful investments. But yeah, I do enjoy the being close to nature and being, being able just to walk out the door and being in the nature. That's very cool. Awesome. Well, Anton, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today. It was definitely a very insightful and interesting discussion on gamification and, and medicals and meditator. Listen, we wish you the best of luck going into the holidays, the years almost over, and also in early 2023, IFXXPOW coming up and things like that. And hopefully we can do this again sometime soon, catch up on more interesting topics in our industry. Thanks a lot for joining us. Have a great day. Thanks too. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to our latest finance feeds podcast episode. Responsorship opportunities or to become a guest, please email us at [email protected].