Months after introducing cryptocurrency trading, Stocktwits.com opened up equity trading for private investors on its social media platform in the hope that a more cohesive community could manage volatile stock markets. A well-liked platform for exchanging trading concepts is Stocktwits. It was one of the online discussion forums that enabled small-scale investors to unite and drive huge gains in meme stocks like GameStop and AMC the previous year, crushing negative hedge funds. Users can choose to make their trades public, and trading will be offered on the site directly through Stocktwits’ broker-dealer subsidiary, ST Invest LLC, the business stated.

Trading by individual investors has decreased from its peak in 2021 as concerns about interest rate hikes and rising inflation have caused the S&P 500 to fall by 19.6% this year. One million monthly active users and over six million registered users utilise Stocktwits. The fact that it allows commission-free and fractional stock trading tends to draw individual investors who cannot afford high per-share costs. The New York-based business is currently concentrating on introducing options trading on the platform in the fourth quarter, coupled with a paid membership for data that analyses the sentiment and behaviour of retail investors.

The platform’s initial trading feature introduced in February was cryptocurrency trading. According to Stocktwits, the equity trading feature will first only be accessible to iOS users before being made available to users of the web and Android versions.