Gotrade, an investment app in Malaysia, announced recently the roll-out of options trading for its users across Southeast Asia. This expansion is powered in partnership with Alpaca, a brokerage infrastructure API offering access to options, stocks, ETFs, fixed income, as well as crypto. Investors residing in Southeast Asia have had limited access to international investing opportunities because of higher order fees, significant balance minimums, as well as overly complex regulations.
But overall retail participation has been growing in Malaysia and Indonesia, with 5 and 17 million investors, respectively, as of this current financial year.
To help address these barriers, Gotrade built an investing platform that allowed users to invest in US stocks for as low as $1 USD. They now intend to introduce covered calls and cash-secured puts next.
Gotrade leverages Alpaca’s Broker API to enable its newly introduced derivatives offering, ensuring a resilient infrastructure for improved order execution and trade processing.
Norman Wanto, CEO of Gotrade, explained that options trading is a natural evolution for their users, and they’re changing the ecosystem by making a tool previously intended just for institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals available to a broader group of investing and trading professionals.
Wanto added that working with Alpaca gives them the “freedom to innovate and scale quickly, which is critical for building a better experience in emerging markets like Southeast Asia.”
Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO and Co-Founder of Alpaca, said that Gotrade’s product-first approach has been a major factor in establishing trust and driving sustainable growth across Southeast Asian markets.
They are looking forward to continuing their partnership by offering the infrastructure they require to launch such products.
Gotrade and Alpaca are now extending their partnership with the introduction of options trading, a collaboration that began in 2021 when Gotrade first launched the fractional trading of US stocks.
