Today, iVest+, a financial markets technology provider, announced the launch of Market Gear, a trading platform, as well as a partnership with news and data provider Benzinga.

As part of the development, Chris Mercer, COO at iVest+, spoke with Benzinga regarding his firm’s role in empowering independent investors with actionable data and insights.

Why Market Gear?

Alongside the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, stock market engagement rose as participants sheltered at home searched for ways to maintain engagement with the outside world.

To address the information asymmetry between beginner and advanced market participants, Market Gear released a mobile and desktop platform designed by educators. “We’re rolling out a retail version of the product because we’ve gotten a lot of requests from customers,” said Mercer. “We’ve taken a lot of different types of data and, instead of giving you grids of numbers, there are a lot of graphical views.”

Market Gear’s core product portfolio consists of the following:

Mercer said the addition of an algorithmically-driven journal enables users to actively monitor performance and adjust strategy.

“The trade journal is a P&L report on steroids,” said Mercer. “You can tag trades as you place them, and then it allows you to view your results by combining traits that match.”

Traders can visually identify the motive and strategy behind trades, as well as grade performance.

“It breaks everything down in a visual way based on hashtags,” he said. “You can turn on the trade journal as an indicator, in the chart, and it will draw a line from where the trade started and where it ended.”

The visualization of data is what differentiates Market Gear from competing platforms, the COO said. From beginner to advanced, traders can learn, apply, and adjust trade strategy on an ongoing basis.

Next Steps

“We’re working on a full-fledged scanner where you can pick from hundreds of variables.” Market Gear users will soon be able to receive SMS texts and email alerts when the parameters of their scans have been met.