The Wire: New offering from Global Trader

I was just forwarded the following announcement from Global Trader and I thought it was quite an interesting idea for day traders / investors. Anybody tried it out? Thoughts?

You can check out the offering here.

The Wire. A Christmas gift worth waiting for

By Charles Savage, CEO of Global Trader

I don’t remember exactly when I first white boarded my vision for Global Traders’ online community offering but it was sometime in 2007. I clearly remember the enthusiasm and excitement with which the IT and marketing teams met my idea, excitement more about the fact that the CEO had finally lost his mind and had nothing to do with my idea at all.

Two Chief Technology Officers later and the work of people best described as wizards, magicians and conjurers and we launched version one of The Wire. The Wire is the name for the new online world we have created and is the centre of our financial community and the platform from which all our community driven services come to life.

It is a closed community in the sense that it is available to our live trading clients only but, beyond this, the restrictions fall away swiftly. The Wire is free to air and it is a radical new approach to delivering meaningful, actionable financial information that enables collaboration and communication and breaks down the barriers between those that trade and those that should trade.

At Global Trader we make it our business to smash down these barriers because we believe that for too long financial markets have unjustifiably been shrouded in mystery and intrigue. It is seen as the realm of engineers, actuaries and rocket scientists that, for the most part, have discouraged you from doing it yourself. To quote Peter Lynch, one of the most successful Wall Street investors of all time, “everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth-grade math, you can do it.” The truth is that Global Trader has now made trading simple.

On The Wire you can call yourself whatever you like, talk to traders, publish your research and views, read blogs about investing, technology trends affecting trading and read about how we view the world of investing. You can live vicariously through your trading alias and learn from fellow traders. When it comes to the what, when and how successfully you trade The Wire is an open book.

Do you remember your first casino experience? I do and I’m pretty sure it went something like this. You wondered around the casino halls in awe of the sounds, light and music, stopping occasionally to peer over the shoulder of the confident punters taking up the seats at the machines and tables. You paused and looked on in wonder at the piles of chips in front of some of the players and, after plucking up enough courage, reached forward and placed your chips behind one of them. You won some and you lost some but you learnt from every hand and grew in confidence until finally a seat became free and you pounced on it.

With The Wire’s Twades you can stand behind real live traders, follow their trades, track their success and if you like even put your money behind their portfolio punts until you feel comfortable enough to join them at the table. If you’ve played enough Blackjack, as I have, you will know that it is always good to cover a couple of boxes. Twades is our “first flight” service to launch on The Wire with more first flight services lined up for 2011.

Then there’s She–Ra, my personal favourite financial blogger, who publishes her work on The Wire’s Skirt Length Theory blog. If there is still some youth about you then you are going to love her approach to financial markets. She says of the myth surrounding trading, “Do you see images of a high risk, fast paced environment populated by coked up investment w*nkers or images of old fogies that have made their millions sitting in silk slippers barking orders at their brokers whilst smoking a pipe? If so then you would be only the tiniest bit right and you would also be SO wrong!”

I have no doubt that the launch of the Wire will be reflected on in Global Traders’ history as the defining moment that best demonstrated our commitment to the vision to boldly go where no South African financial service provider has even dared to dream about. Welcome to the New World!

Insider trading just got trumped by Twades! The question is, were you following?