New | US stocks a phone tap away for Chinese traders via Tiger Brokers
Shanghai Composite Index lost 18.7 per cent in the last year, making it one of the world’s worst-performing equity markets, driving Chinese traders to seek better returns elsewhere, and into Tiger Brokers’ app
If entrepreneur Wu Tianhua has his way, more Chinese-speaking investors across the world will adopt what he claims is a more convenient way of injecting cash into the US stock market, via their smartphones.
Wu’s Beijing-based Tiger Brokers offers an app-based trading service, including for mainlanders, to trade US equities. It’s gearing up to expand into the rest of Asia after raising 200 million yuan (US$29 million) in a new round of funding in December from investors including Citic GoldStone Fund Management and Huagai Capital.
“US equity trading is a niche market in China,” said Wu, Tiger’s 33-year-old chief executive. “Looking abroad, there is huge unmet demand from Chinese-speaking investors to use a convenient and reliable service to trade US stocks.”
Shanghai’s benchmark Composite Index lost 18.7 per cent in the last year, making it one of the world’s worst-performing major equity markets – only the bourses of Lusaka, Ghana and Nigeria recorded larger losses. That’s spurring many Chinese investors to seek better returns elsewhere, driving them to apps like Tiger Brokers.
The three-year-old company, backed to the tune of 100 million yuan in 2015 from Xiaomi, one of China’s largest home-grown smartphone makers, has seen its annual mainland transactions surge to 120 billion yuan in 2016.
Without complicated paperwork, Chinese-speaking investors can open a US trading account on Tiger Brokers’ app by simply filling out and uploading some personal information online.