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Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app

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Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app

#41

Post by melony »

timothygoltser wrote: post #22
captn3m0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is liable if the user's brokerage account gets blocked?

It depends on the nature of the activity that got the account blocked - we place limits on the types of legitimate account activity that are likely to get a user blocked (sending too many orders too quickly, sending orders that could be batched as a flood of single orders, etc.), but for fraudulent or otherwise illegal activity, that liability is on the user. When starting a new integration, we schedule a meeting wit…

For a copy trading app, what compliance problems do you envision using your service? Is the trader being copied liable if the people copying him lose money (generally speaking)?

Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app

#42

Post by seandoh »

hemloc_io wrote: post #36
timothygoltser wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different brokerages take different positions on these sorts of integrations - some go after all third-party integrations aggressively (including screen scrapers), while some will turn a blind eye as long as you're not abusing their platform. For a brokerage like Robinhood, we've only seen them take enforcement actions against individuals if they send a high volume of orders in a short timeframe. It's worth noting th…

Haha awesome thanks for your response this seems like a super useful service. Congrats on the launch and good luck! :)

Thanks for checking us out - really appreciate it.

Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app

#43

Post by vmception »

This gave me PTSD on dealing with algorithmic stock market stuff. Glad you are doing it, I feel like this model accumulates tech debt too quickly, you are stuck doing integrations over and over again.

Everyone that can write code just moved over to crypto, where trading is 24/7, the CeFi exchanges have free, standardized APIs and the onchain stuff is super easy to code too.

In TradFi like this, a whole nother decade has gone by and barely anything has changed, the ridiculous barrier of entry is what makes people believe you have to be an investment banking quant just to write a trading algorithm. When its really just the cost of getting direct market access.

Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app

#44

Post by timothygoltser »

melony wrote: post #41
timothygoltser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the nature of the activity that got the account blocked - we place limits on the types of legitimate account activity that are likely to get a user blocked (sending too many orders too quickly, sending orders that could be batched as a flood of single orders, etc.), but for fraudulent or otherwise illegal activity, that liability is on the user. When starting a new integration, we schedule a meeting wit…

For a copy trading app, what compliance problems do you envision using your service? Is the trader being copied liable if the people copying him lose money (generally speaking)?

While I'm not fully qualified to comment on this (I'm not a lawyer/have no formal experience with securities law), my understanding is that it would depend on if the trader in question is providing investment advice. The SEC seems to have no clear position on the legality of copy trading at the moment - some of our customers are building copy trading apps, and they all seem to be in agreement that regulatory uncertainty is just one of the risks of building that sort of product at the moment.

Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app

#45

Post by seandoh »

melony wrote: post #41
timothygoltser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the nature of the activity that got the account blocked - we place limits on the types of legitimate account activity that are likely to get a user blocked (sending too many orders too quickly, sending orders that could be batched as a flood of single orders, etc.), but for fraudulent or otherwise illegal activity, that liability is on the user. When starting a new integration, we schedule a meeting wit…

For a copy trading app, what compliance problems do you envision using your service? Is the trader being copied liable if the people copying him lose money (generally speaking)?

We spoke with some lawyers while building our social investing app to gain a clearer understanding of this. Like Tim said, we're not lawyers, but the ones we spoke to said that this is a major gray area.

Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app

#46

Post by not_exactly__ »

namdnay wrote: post #32
timothygoltser wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we try to form relationships with all of the brokerages we integrate with (including the ones we reverse engineer), we do still have to do the abuse/block dance with their protective systems occasionally. We've found that cutting out headless browsers has made it much easier to do this, for two main reasons: 1) Some brokerages have fairly sophisticated anti-screen-scraping protections, but their private APIs ar…

“I ask my neighbours for some of their apples, but if they don’t give them, I go into their garden at nighttime with a big ladder…”

Wrong analogy. You’re describing theft. It’s More like, my neighbor planted an apple tree in their yard and told me, “this is your tree. You can pick any fruits off of it, anytime you’d like.” I told the jam making shop down the street that they can come get apples on this tree anytime if they give me some of the apple jam they end up making. My neighbor didn’t explicit permit me to do this, but also didn’t forbid me. I think? So now the jam making shop owner goes and grab my apple on my neighbor’s tree.

Maybe the solution is just to have the jam maker give the neighbor a can?

Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app

#47

Post by timothygoltser »

vmception wrote: post #43

This gave me PTSD on dealing with algorithmic stock market stuff. Glad you are doing it, I feel like this model accumulates tech debt too quickly, you are stuck doing integrations over and over again. Everyone that can write code just moved over to crypto, where trading is 24/7, the CeFi exchanges have free, standardized APIs and the onchain stuff is super easy to code too. In TradFi like this, a whole nother decade…

Agreed - there's no fundamental reason interfacing with traditional brokerages should be as difficult as it is today. We're working to form relationships with all of the brokerages that we integrate with and are advocating for them to focus on exposing and maintaining public APIs so people can delegate access to (and interface with) their accounts more safely.

In the meantime, the technical debt is manageable, but probably only if you're doing this as a full-time job - in my experience, trying to build an investing app and the integrations that power it at the same time is a losing battle.

Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app

#48

Post by vmception »

I've dealt with a lot of these over the last decade, here is my wishlist:

- Multi-legged options trading

- Portfolio Margining (and SPAN) system

- Cross asset and cross portfolio margin management, inherited by Portfolio Margining regulations

most API trading services don't allow access to options contracts, or if they do (such as Tradier), they only have the inferior plebeian Reg-T margin which barely makes any sense. Although most of retail doesn't know the difference so its probably fine for your service.

PM and SPAN margining are similar, but I think PM is easier to calculate one way: just take Reg-T margin requirements and calculate the loss in a +/-15% move (6% for indices), and make that loss the margin requirement. Reg-T margin assumes something closer to a +/-100% move in the underlying asset, which winds up taking up too much capital.

Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app

#49

Post by seandoh »

stefanba3 wrote: post #31

First off, congrats! The problem I always run into with existing offerings, which as you mention all go through Plaid or Yodlee, is that there is never enough transaction history available for what I need. Typically, its only 3 months' worth at most.

Thanks!
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