 Hello, I'm Donald Leggett and welcome to the latest London Southeast CU interview. I'm joined by Duncan Anderson, CU at Tick Mill, the futures and options trading platform for sophisticated retail investors. Access to technical trading techniques like futures and options were once only available to hedge funds and city traders. Now companies like Tick Mill are making futures trading available to a broader retail audience. Welcome Duncan, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me Donald. It is a pleasure, believe you me, and how are you today Duncan? Not too bad, not too bad thanks. Fantastic, okay today we're discussing futures and options. In America they're widely used by retail investors, up to a million and a half of them use futures and options, but not so many in the UK and Europe. Is that your vision for futures and trading for retail investors to start using them over here? Well I was fortunate enough to have actually worked on the Chicago mercantile exchange back in the 90s and indeed our Tick Mill founders started their trading careers with futures and options. So to some extent it's really sort of embedded in our DNA, but there's been a really real transformational shift in the industry that now gives investors access to these markets that you wouldn't have had back in those days. And 2021 is for sure heading in that direction and for the UK, for Europe and beyond, I really think these markets are actually going to increase exponentially. But maybe it's just worth explaining that a future is simply a contract that allows an investor to buy or sell an asset like a stock index, a currency or a commodity like oil that gets settled at some point in the future and these transactions are done on regulated exchanges and this gives significant security to the investor itself. I think Tick Mill as an established broker, it acts as a sort of destination point for traders and we've got a significant product base, very competitive pricing and if you've not really tried futures or options up until this point in time, it's a really opportune moment actually to have a look at this asset class. Okay, so let's take a holistic overview of futures and options trading. What kind of opportunities does it bring to the investor? Well, they really sort of give an investor this sort of value add element to an existing portfolio they may have. I mean, there are a number of facets to the future. So one is, and I'll get it out of the way quickly, it's leverage but it's a really important element as far as a future is concerned. So you only need to place a small deposit with your broker. It's just an efficient way to utilize your investment capital if you are accessing a future or an option. You can speculate short and long term on a diverse range of assets. I mentioned stock indexes but there's commodities, currencies and lots of different products available to utilize. You can hedge an existing investment portfolio. You can actually also have access 24 hours to the markets which allows you really to respond immediately to any change in market conditions. Okay, you say there's a mini revolution taking place but it all sounds quite intriguing and it's started in America and it's coming across the water over here. Where does Tickmill fit into those changes? Yeah, so it's a really good question Donald. It's, I mean, investing, like I said, has become far more accessible to a much wider audience and Tickmill's sort of been able to connect our users with a diverse number of futures exchanges and that goes from the CME, the mercantile exchange, all the way through to the smaller exchanges which is one of our newest exchanges out there. We've also partnered with some of the sort of, you know, really world-class technology providers including CQG which is a platform provider and they've been around for 30 years and really have some cutting-edge functionality to it. It allows also us to connect you, the investor, to third-party platforms. So, you know, if you're looking to pipe your trade through us you may not need to actually change your platform provider. All of this is actually available on the website so it's very accessible. Okay, so at a practical level, is that where I should be advising people to go? Should we be putting people, if they want to educate themselves, should they go to your website? How do they start trading? You know, once again, is that something you find easily accessible on your website? Yeah, absolutely. You know, we spent quite a lot of time and effort actually ensuring that the website we've got gives you access to a huge amount of educational material. We've got in-house writers, analysts and they've got views on, you know, identifying opportunities. We've got data-driven insights coming from some of our partners and lots of other sort of freely available information. I mean, all really at your fingertips. We've made it as easy as possible to open and fund an account, get access to your platform and trade either from a desktop or from a mobile app so you can really sort of keep in touch with the markets wherever you are. Is it less daunting than you think to start trading Duncan? I mean, for example, how much would the minimum that you actually have to have to start trading? Yeah, I mean, some of the most popular markets include the S&P 500, which your viewers will be fully aware of, the Nasdaq and no doubt, you know, the Dow Jones. So if you are looking to trade, say the micro Dow Jones contract, it will give you exposure to approximately about $16,000 of those 30 stocks. And all you need to do is simply deposit a small percentage of that. That's roughly 6%. So $1,000, which gives you full exposure to the market. And the cost of trading that contract, you know, whether you go long or short, is around $1. So it's very cheap and very, very effective. Okay. Putting traders first is your motto, a good motto. So what do your traders look like in demographic terms and affluence terms? And what way do you put them first? Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I mean, it all starts with great customer service. Simply, I mean, we want traders to succeed. And that's another one of our sort of motos. And that allows them to have a completely seamless experience with us. As I said, we've got great conditions, some of the best actually in the industry. And we've some top value add tools that anyone can get access to. But as far as clients are concerned, they range across all ages, in fact. And from those new to investing, to the tech savvy quant looking to automate a trading strategy, all the way through to small corporas. So what we've sort of created is a concierge sort of type approach to customer service, you know, with a super fast response rates, and a voice at the end of the phone, you know, that has the knowledge and experience to offer valuable service to our clients. So putting traders first would definitely be a customer service, say tick in the box as well. I like to think so. And I mean, that's, you know, that is one of one of our sort of great assets, I believe. Okay, good answer. I like that answer. How much leverage does your product allow? And how have you designed the platform to mitigate that risk? So I mean, if we take that micro DAO example again, so you're talking about 16 times leverage. And what I mean by that is it's, it's 16 times the amount you need to deposit with us very simply. Yeah. And this is useful, but not excessive. So it's an extremely efficient tool to get the same level of exposure for a fraction of the price, and really allows you to sort of harness your unutilized funds in other ways. Of course, there are risks, but given the right conditions, it really is a potent tool. But we've also implemented some sort of leading software solutions that incorporate auto liquidation. So if the client gets into a position where, where there may be some sort of negativity involved, it actually stops. If the trade goes against the client. Correct. Yeah. So this stops you from ending up with a negative balance and protects your funds. I mean, it's quite unique. And it's allowed actually technical to continue to push technology boundaries for all its clients. Okay. So we've, we've, we've been through a number of these different points, but perhaps if you could pull, pull the different strands together for us, why should I trust TICML with my future's trades? Why you, why, rather than some of the competitors? Well, I mean, TICML is a fast growing dynamic global financial services provider. We were actually physically located next door to the Bank of England. We're regulated by the UK's FCA and a number of regulators in other jurisdictions globally. We've got about 160 different countries that we service. There are 40,000 active clients globally. And we're probably transacting somewhere in the region of 10 million trades a month, which roughly equates about $150 billion of notional interest. So it's, it's a, it's a, it's a large business for what we do at the moment. And our trading conditions mean that the, you know, when, when a client comes to us, they actually tend to stay with us. And I think that's sort of testament to the, the great customer service we've got, the infrastructure, the technology rollout, and all these factors that drives our business forward. And finally, last question, if we're to invest as fine TICML and the product portfolio, we've been discussing. Well, we've got a great new website. As I mentioned, it's www.TICML.co.uk. And it's got lots of interactive features, you know, including video content, analysts, news from a, you know, a host of informative links. And, you know, if you need more information, you know, if you need more information, there's chat functionality, email, phone, and this sort of connects with our, you know, really great customer support team who will be glad to need to help you in any way they can. Thank you, Anderson. See you at TICML here in the UK. Thank you so much indeed for speaking to us today. That was very informative. I would learn a lot. Thanks for watching and do stay safe.