Stox Raises $8 Million To Make 'Real Equity Trading Accessible To All'

Stox has raised $8 million to help the company bring its unique trading platform to Europe this summer.

"We're an online stock brokerage that's designed first and foremost to make stock trading, real equity trading, accessible to all," Roy Shaham, co-founder and CEO of Stox, told Benzinga. "We try making it accessible to all by creating an exciting environment on a very easy to understand platform where you can see what others are trading. That's a big difference between us and conventional stock brokerages."

The $8 million Series A, which was led by Singulariteam, will help Stox improve its service and expand to new markets. The company will initially launch in Europe in June and focus heavily on the United Kingdom, but Stox wants to come to the United States later this year.

Related Link: 22 Fintech Apps Coming To Apple Watch

Learning From The Best

"It's a normal brokerage, so you can buy and sell stocks," said Shaham. "And then you can go to the next tab and see other traders…[and] their performance matrix (their gain). You can also see some social data. You can see what they're trading."

Traders can decide how much they charge for others to see what is in their portfolios.

"So when a customer comes, he can see prices of other traders, and by clicking inside the profile to subscribe to other people, you can actually view all their trades," Shaham explained. "Of course, we're not really showing money in the system -- just percentages in the portfolio."

Upon subscribing to another trader's portfolio, users will be notified whenever that person trades.

"You can also copy them," said Shaham. "Meaning [that] you set an amount -- we call it piggybacking -- of cash for this portfolio. What this does is it actually copies and mirrors his portfolio."

From then on, Stox will buy and sell in accordance with that portfolio.

Follow Anonymously

Stox hopes to prevent unscrupulous traders from gaming the system by preventing users from seeing who is mirroring their portfolios.

"First of all, you don't know who's piggybacking you," said Shaham. "You don't know how many people are doing this trade after you. And you don't know how much money is behind you."

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.