Dan Pipitone, Co-Founder of TradeZero. Fought our Clearing Firm to Get $GME Approved, WE ARE LIVE. Ask about Dead Hedgies, Other Trading Platforms Lying - AMA!

How does Trade Zero make money if it doesn't charge for commissions? Do you do the same thing as Robinhood and sell deal flow and information to large institutional players like hedge funds?

If so, what are you doing to mitigate any conflicts of interest moving forward?

TradeZero makes money on short interest and short locates. RH doesn’t allow shorting. Every firm out there must post their 606 report for order routing. We make about .$70 per 1000 shares while the boys at RH make $2.60 per 1000. That difference translates to price improvement for our clients and not $ for us! In addition, non marketable limit orders are routed directly to exchanges like NASDAQ. This can be verified by viewing the 606 reports on every brokers website. Including ours. We also make $ on margin interest and finally on platform subscriptions.

FULL TRANSPARENCY

Props to you for honesty despite being crapped on already in the comments to this question.

I think I’ll look at signing up to your platform.

No cap, we didn’t see this comment until now. If you haven’t noticed, market has been a little insane ;) It’s been incredibly busy and we needed to unwind a bit. we had no issue telling you guys our pricing structure. Apologies on the delay. It’s Friday night

I can’t tell if you’re saying no cap ironically or not.

I’m not as young as I look.

Will you sell your client order data to hedge funds?

FUCK NO! And we've been approached

The Interactive Brokers founder explicitly stated that they stopped allowing buying in order to protect themselves from having to pick up the tab for the shorts, which also means they intentionally stole from retail investors in order to help pick up the tab. What can be done about this?

And honestly - this is showing which firms are actually on the side of their customers, and who is just posing in their PR materials. When push comes to shove, Robinhood and IB refused to stand by their customers.

Customers must revolt, or it will happen again and again. Vote with your business.

What's it going to cost to transfer my portfolio from IB to TZ?

We will pay your transfer fees in. So $0

is this US only or is there access to this in Canada?

Canada also! Email our support team and they will get this 100% covered for you.

You can switch brokers!

Hi - many traders lost large amounts of capital when TradeZero went offline for hours - and returned to huge red positions.

These losses incurred - how can this be prevented in the future and does TZ take any accountability or responsibility for this?

We are always trying to ensure that the platform is up 100% of the time. There are a ton of moving parts to these systems. We are aware of some users experiencing down time on the web platform this week, we are implementing the following steps:

A back up simple order entry form so that web users will have a back up, in addition to the mobile app. In addition, any web user that wishes to try the Pro platform, we will provide it free for three months. Just come to the live chat or email us at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) and we will enable the Pro free for three months.

Our whole engineering team was fighting like crazy to keep things live yesterday - downtime is horrible, and we work our asses off to avoid it. That said, like u/rykerrk said, this does happen occasionally for any trading firm.

We managed to scale to 100x the volume in 2 hours. In comparison, Robinhood was down for 48 hours straight last year.

That’s no excuse though. We want to curb stomp them on stability AS WELL as functionality. Our VP Engineering is very much on top of our scaling requirements, and performance will CONSTANTLY improve.

Do you think any of the people involved in this situation both sides will face legal repercussions? Im hoping the hedge funds pay for this mess. Thanks. Have a nice day.

I dont think individuals will. IT will definitely be interesting to see. That may change if there were some folks that were really leading the charge to trade collusively

What was the conversation like with the clearing firms yesterday?

Well there were at least 100 F bombs thrown at them. I was like theres NO WAY we are shutting these off. Shut me down, do what you have to do, but this is still America and who are you to tell people that they cant trade their $

Here's the big question: What does all this mean for the overall market? Many people are talking about a big correction on the horizon, and the SPY daily isn't looking too hot.

Well the market has been on a tear for almost a year with the Fed contiuously pumping money in. When that stops, so will the party!

Hi Dan,

On your email you said you would mention hedge funds that are going down by the hour. Could you give some more information on that? Is there merit to holding GME to cause a squeeze?

Cheers

While I cannot recommend buying or selling. I would say, BE CAREFUL! These are HIGHLY volatile stocks and make sure you are using only risk capital!

What are your thoughts on the outcome of more well known trading sites like Robinhood; do you see them lifting restrictions? What kind of pressure is being applied to them? Aside from your apparent defiance, why were they forced to cave when you weren't?

They actually just added some more restrictions in. So this DOES NOT look like a one off. Fasten your seatbelts RH users

Have you received any calls from a government entity instructing or asking you to shutdown buying of these volatile stocks? SEC, someone in Biden's administration, etc?

Nope! Because its not the SEC. It is firms MISMANAGING their capital and then having to force people to not open new positions

HEADS UP - going to have to head off in 10 minutes, been going for an hour and a half .

We'll definitely be doing this again - sorry if I couldn't get to your question!

In the meantime, be sure to go to https://tradezero.co and signup for your TZ account.

• Real customer service that actually picks up the phone.
• Robust short functionality, including shorting hard to borrow stocks
• Support for all platforms - web, android, iOS, PC. Wherever you want to trade, we're there.
• A leadership team that will go thermonuclear on clearing firms if they try to block your trades. Screw everyone that rolled over on this.

Catch you all soon!

How hard was it to find GME short locates?

GME locates were NOT available at all. ZERO. The last day I got a short locate was 1/25, and that was the day they increased margin requirments for GME. By doing that, I couldn't credit back my shares (error said: insufficient shares).

GME has been extremely tough to borrow., As GME has been on the NYSE threshold list which means that locates can only be used one time. So whenever we have shares to borrow on a threshold security, the borrow/locate rate accepted includes not only the fee to locate, but also the fee to hold those shares short for the fisrt night

Did u have any luck with AMC or NOK?

Yep had and have those both long and short.

Hi Dan, appreciate you doing this and having the balls to stand up for what's right! Off topic question, will TradeZero platform ever be available on Mac?! lol

LOVE IT!!!! Yes.... We are working on a Mac version. Right now you have the Web Pro which is full streaming and also a totally customizable layout

Do you think the big squeeze happened yet?

We are in it! The RETAIL RECKONING IS OCCURRING And the hedgies aer all scrambong to rework their algos

hedgies aer all scrambong

"Scrambong" is an excellent misspelling.

LOL! Just noticed that

How likely is it that the Hedgies will resort to a life of bike messengering while squatting in an abandoned warehouse?

Not very! But a hysterical visual!

Is it possible to move my portfolio from RH to TradeZero?

Yes, just open a new account and then you can fill out the ACAT form and we can pull the RH account

Do you think the markets are down because institutions are selling off positions to cover their losses on shorts?

I think thats part of it..... But also with the country shutting down, entire industries still shuttered, the rise and fall of the market has been inline with the promise or the dissemination of stimulus

Is Tradezero going bankrupt?

TradeZero is well capitalized. we signed 5k+ accounts yesterday, we’re profitable, and grew 3x in 2020. Growth rate is accelerating in 2021 by a LOT

Why do the clearing firms care about restricting trades? Don't they just settle transactions?

They have capital requirements based on the notional value that the firms that clear there trade. The notional value is max exposure of a firm, So the firms were asked for larger sums on deposit with regulatory . Some were unwilling or unable to meet those calls, thus they shut down trading!

What do you think will be the future for retail traders? Is anything going to change?

The Retail Reckoning is here. And while the Fed continues to pump in $, this will continue imo

Why do locate prices fluctuate? Is it algorithm based, nothing more annoying then wanting to add into a winner but the locate doubled, and then after new lows 10minutes later its back to the original price, thanks :D

Locate prices will fluctuate as we buy through less expensive locates and get to higher priced ones. Then sometimes when we are onto a higher priced vendor, someone with less expensive shares will come in and the price will go down.

Why the poor execution arrows for entries and exits?!?! I there its fair to say a majority of traders would prefer DAS like execution arrows on TZ Pro, why not at least give the option, some executions can be so tricky to read, thanks

Noted! We will adjust those.

BTW... Did you see that there is a new version of ZeroPro out today? Has some cool stuff like Hot Buttons! Check it out

How is your recent growth in new registrations, good for current customers/clients, when you tout your expansion as a good thing? The bigger the platform, the more lag and load it endures, which happens frequently on the OPEN. Secondly, more people means short locates & borrows harder to find (or more expensive). Both of these things is bad news for people on your platform. Address this concern, for your current customer.

It shows that more folks are putting their trust in us.. And we have expended locate supply and are further increasing it with some new relationships. A lot will be noticeable with respect to locate rates in the next couple weeks. Stay Tuned!

A stock that wasn’t really talked about yesterday that was restricted yesterday was GBR. I managed to get a position in tradezero, but other brokers restricted it even though it wasn’t part of the WSB madness. Thoughts?

We had it available. Both LONG and SHORT!

Hey Dan, Thanks for doing this!

My question is will you be selling cryptocurrencies?

Potentially - working on it! Not something in the next 6 months but definitely something we want to do, and will do.

EVERYONE wants this, so it's an obvious thing to build. A lot of our roadmap is doubling and tripling down on our short functionality. Most firms don't offer short locates, so if you want to short something that isn't TSLA, you're hosed.

There's a lot of technical infrastructure that goes into that kind of stuff. We're also vastly expanding our options capabilities in the months to come.

Especially to do it right

Have you invested in gme?

I have not personally. Im long $BA right not.. BORING!!

Hey Dan. Your outgoing wire transfer fees are A LOT. IB offers first free and then $10 USD. Why chage a lot? Lower the Wire fees. Trust me you will get way more customers!

Great thought. We are going to lower that!

Is TZ available in Canada?

YES! Visit tradezero.co - TradeZero International has no PDT rules whatsoever, and 6:1 margin with low deposit requirements. check it out

Why did you change your minimum deposit from $500 to $2500 when you had an influx of new users?

We did not! Our minimum is and has always been $2500. TZ Intl has a lower minimum (for non US folks). However, for smaller accounts, please check out OpenHand. www.openhand.com

Hi tradezero_dan, your post has been removed because:

Your post has been removed because it lacks adequate proof.

Unfortunately, the links or photos you've posted could have been posted by anyone, and they don't prove that you are the person doing the AMA. Your proof needs to be something that connects the fact that you're doing an AMA with your identity. This could be something like a photo of you showing what you're doing the AMA about with a sign that has your username and the date. It could also be documents (partially redacted if desired) with a note that has the username and the date.

Here's a link to the section of our wiki that discusses proof.

Please let us know when the proof has been added by replying here and we'll put the post back up. Cheers!

Please contact the mods if you need further assistance

Hi there! Sure thing. Below's another photo verification.

https://imgur.com/KThN1hS

Also, our official twitter accounts have been updated with a link to the post. Thanks!

​

• My Personal Twitter https://twitter.com/danpipny
• TradeZero's Twitter: www.twitter.com/trade0us

Ok, your post has been reapproved. Please edit the specific proof links into the AMA introduction.

You bet - doing that now. Thanks!

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live chat

Is tradezero ready and scalable for the influx of customers. Keeping the service fast and reliable?

Yes, have and are bringing in additional staff as we speak!

I’m kind of scared to finish the application for Trade Zero. There’s a lot of signing involved, why?

Well these are all legal docs that require your acceptance. Because our service is geared towards active traders, things like the day trading risk disclosure, the pre and post trading disclosures and the penny stock risk disclosure require signatures. Hopefully this will put you at ease. If not feel free to call us with any questions: 718-709-4925