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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

#51

Post by seandoh »

alistairclark7 wrote: post #40
timothygoltser wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair point - we've been trying to determine the best way to compress "using reverse-engineered private APIs in violation of their terms, but in practice brokerages don't really take enforcement actions against this," and "direct integrations" is what we came up with. We'll work on finding a better way to express this and are open to suggestions.

I think "unofficial API" is probably the most succinct phrase without being dishonest. A direct integration does imply some kind of professional relationship with the other company.

This sounds good - thank you for the feedback.

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

#52

Post by timothygoltser »

vmception wrote: post #48

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 sens…

You're right that most retail investors don't pay attention to the specifics of how margin requirements are calculated. To my knowledge, the only brokerage that's readily accessible to retail investors that provides SPAN margining is IB, and relatively few (US) retail investors use them compared to the more mainstream brokerages.

In terms of cross-asset-and-portfolio margin management, it definitely makes more sense to base risk calculations on a broad view of positions rather than the composition of a single portfolio.

I'm slightly out of my depth here; this is an interesting perspective I haven't seen yet, so I'll definitely be doing some more research into the problems you described.

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

#53

Post by danielvaughn »

koolba wrote: post #33

Is there any brokerage who’s terms of service or fraud liability protections aren’t entirely waived by using a service like this? Do end users provide the credentials for their brokerage accounts? I can’t imagine any infosec officer or general counsel at a brokerage agreeing to screen scraped data collection. They already get enough legal threats for bad pricing / bad execution, this would be an entirely new can of w…

I used to do this exact thing as a job, and it's crazy how little US brokers do to protect their APIs (at least back when I was doing it around 2015), given the security implications. I'm not even a hacker and I was able to reverse engineer 90% of the US brokerages without a problem.

Compare that to Singapore. I spent about an hour toying with the Lim & Tan API before our account got shut down. Apparently the fucking CTO was woken up in the middle of the night by all the alarm bells I set off lol.

edit: when I say "without a problem", I mean that in relative terms. We got plenty of strongly-worded letters asking us to stop, and they played whack-a-mole with our instances. But we never faced a serious challenge to what we were doing.

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

#54

Post by jhirschi »

My co-founder and I almost made the exact same transition you mentioned. Frustration with Plaid and MX made us wonder if we should just built the integrations ourselves and make that our company. We'd be interested in staying in touch and potentially partnering

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

#55

Post by rmesters »

Congrats on the launch - what you've built is incredibly cool. When do you plan to add European investment accounts?

I cofounded Nordigen (Plaid competitor in Europe) and we use PSD2 bank connections, which are great for payments data but do not cover investment data, which is less than ideal. Aggregating OAuth APIs for European brokerages would make so much sense.

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

#57

Post by jhirschi »

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)?

There is probably a reason eToro, the premier copy trader, only does crypto copy trading in the US. Just food for thought. Effectively managing others' money would effectively make the trade-makers RIAs

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

#58

Post by seandoh »

jhirschi wrote: post #54

My co-founder and I almost made the exact same transition you mentioned. Frustration with Plaid and MX made us wonder if we should just built the integrations ourselves and make that our company. We'd be interested in staying in touch and potentially partnering

Sounds good - feel free to email me at sean@realizefi.com

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

#59

Post by seandoh »

rmesters wrote: post #55

Congrats on the launch - what you've built is incredibly cool. When do you plan to add European investment accounts? I cofounded Nordigen (Plaid competitor in Europe) and we use PSD2 bank connections, which are great for payments data but do not cover investment data, which is less than ideal. Aggregating OAuth APIs for European brokerages would make so much sense.

Thanks! Just checked out Nordigen - love what you're doing.

We've gotten a lot of requests to support European investment accounts and plan on moving into that space in a few months.

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