Earlier this month, Austrian startup Wikifolio.com announced that it has secured a partnership with German portal Finanzen100, the leader in mobile financial information.
Wikifolio.com was developed by a team led by Andreas Kern in Vienna, and started operations in August 2012 in Germany. A couple of months ago, we reported on the expansion of their operations to Austria (read about it here). Wikifolio certificates are said to be the first social media investment products available, equipped with their own ISIN, meaning they can be traded on the Stuttgart stock exchange and over the counter at Lang & Schwarz. However, this is only the start.
Sales through Finanzen100
With this new partnership, wikifolio certificates will be traded through the Finanzen100 Android smartphone app, with an iOS app equipped with wikifolio coming soon. In essense, Finanzen100 users are not only able to access wikifolio.com information, but also to directly invest in wikifolio certificates. In order to include a social component, wikifolio.com allows amateurs and professionals to monitor the trading strategies of traders, these strategies being called wikifolios, along with all the comments made by traders on these transactions.
In order to bring the social trading component of wikifolio.com to the trader, the Finanzen100 app integrates all comments, trades and data of wikifolio index certificates. CEO Andreas Kern told inventures.eu that “Finanzen100 … is a perfect fit as we have joint activities with many more leading companies including OnVista, Börse Stuttgart, HSBC, Wallstreet Online etc.“
Also, through this partnership, the young startup hopes to increase usability for its users, whocan watch wikifolio trades, comments and more in real time through the Finanzen100 application.
“In addition, our social trading content is integrated to other financial information, e.g. during watching a stock chart on the app you can find out which top traders have made recent trades in this stock. More than 100.000 users have downloaded the new version in the first hours,” Kern added.
Recent accomplishments and future plans
To date, more than 5.370 wikifolios have been published on the website and yesterday, trade number one million was executed. As for revenues, “we have been profitablein the first quarter of 2014, but will increase our investments in product development and marketing including new markets in Europe. So we do not plan a profit for 2014 in total,” Kern said.
On the recent accomplishments list, the startup notes the emergence of a new segment exclusively for professional advisors. “Established advisors and asset managers, like HPM or Bayrische Vermögen, started their own wikifolios,” Kern said. “Retail investors can benefit from such strategies starting with 100 euros, for example. Secondly, structured products like knock-out products from HSBC and Lang & Schwarz can be traded within wikifolios – with about 50.000 tradable underlyings, wikifolios are a great tool also for bear markets or phases of high volatility.”
Currently, Wikifolio.com has a team of 16 people and is growing in order to achieve more ambitious goals in the near future. “We are quite busy at the moment: new order types for publishing traders, wikifolios which include other wikifolios, a new watchlist and alerting service, new major partners, more underlyings in our investment universe, new markets in Europe,” Kern said.
