Chat while you trade: Introducing the world's first online social network investing site

Hong Kong is one of the world's financial capitals, but how about a leader in financial technology? A home-grown brokerage is well on its way to making the latter true. Named by Amazon last year as one of the top five start-ups in Asia, 8 Securities defines itself as a "social stock-trading service".

The company was founded by Mikaal Abdulla and Mathias Helleu, both formerly of E-trade, another online brokerage. The pair set out on their own two years ago with the idea of offering internet trading with a social platform.

Put most simply, it's Facebook combined with internet trading. People form networks on the 8 Securities platform. They can chat while trading and gather trading ideas from other people on the system. Users are automatically connected with other traders based on the markets they're in, level of investing experience and trading style.

The concept liberates people from a traditional dependence on sell-side research, by which large brokerages feed reports to fund houses. These reports find their way into the hands of public investors, but only after the ideas have been absorbed by the big institutional investors and the information fully reflected in the share price.

The site aims to empower users to connect with each other in order to swap fresh trading ideas and information. Every account holder picks an avatar, or an online identity that lets users keep their real identity under wraps.

To encourage authentic discussion - and to ensure that people are not using the site to pump up share prices - a user's financial transactions are visible to everyone. If they give advice about a stock, others can check to see if the person is backing up his or her words with actual trading.