Boston-based Currensee, a social network for the exploding market of foreign exchange trading, recently launched their Trade Leaders Investment Program — paving the way in online trading and social investing innovation.
Trade Leaders are designated, top performers within the Currensee community, which has amassed over seven thousand members to date. The program then works to provide private investors across the globe (and who may not be as well-versed in currency trading) the opportunity to follow and automatically execute trades based on the activity of these top performers.
Breaking Down the Currensee Model
Currensee’s underlying incentive structure for the program is simple and compelling: “Invest and follow the top Currensee traders. Their success is your success.” Currensee’s algorithms identify and rank Trade Leaders within the Currensee network based on their performance and risk. The algorithm, which Currensee has branded the “Trader Authority Index,” screens for things like historical performance, risk management and measures the trader’s actual returns against the S&P.
Private investors on Currensee hand select the Trade Leaders they want to follow and control their asset allocation in their portfolios. Private investors can then opt-in to execute trades automatically based on these Trade Leaders’ activity. Private investors pay an annualized 2 percent monthly service fee based on the average funds in their account, and a 20 percent “success fee” of profits generated go to respective Trade Leaders in their portfolio.
In order to participate in the program as a Trade Leader, an individual’s risk management strategy, background and performance is assessed. Once traders are part of the program, their performance is reviewed daily, and they are then only compensated on successful trades and by creating a revenue stream.
As Currensee continues to scale, this program means Trade Leaders will be able to focus on trading in their niche and avoid the administration and hassle that comes along with having clients. Instead, talented investors will be paid a fraction of the earnings from private investors on Currensee who execute trades based on their portfolio.
More On Currensee
Currensee was founded in late 2008 here in the financial hub of Boston with the idea of providing real time data about currency trades in order to improve traders’ chances of making good investments.
The company closed a $4M Series A round from North Bridge Venture Partners last October and in February, four months later, an additional $8.8M in capital was infused into the company with Egan-Managed Capital. Part of that capital was dedicated to international expansion, where foreign exchange trading is growing rapidly, and the other for building what they referred to at the time as a “social sentiment indicator.”
Over 2 million trades have been placed on Currensee to date. According to the company, traders from over 130 countries have already linked their live brokerage accounts with one of more than 100 brokers supported by the platform. Currensee has partnered with online trading broker AvaFX for the Trade Leaders Investment Program.
