Sherwood Media, LLC hosts certain event sessions, and generally produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news. xcritical Securities, LLC (member SIPC), is a registered broker dealer and provides brokerage clearing services. Cryptocurrency services are offered through an account with xcritical Crypto, LLC. xcritical Derivatives, LLC, is a registered futures commission merchant with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Member of National Futures Association (NFA). FINRA, which has federal authority to regulate financial firms, said the company also failed to reasonably maintain its technology and neglected to do proper due diligence before approving customers for complex trades called options.
The Browser Company launches Arc Search on Android
Additionally, in-person guests will be able to connect and network with a community of fellow retail traders through curated programming and evening entertainment. “We do not see growth as sustainable, and we question the ability of the company to generate competitive margins,” he said, citing the company’s focus on small accounts that may not be very profitable, as a key reason. Acknowledging that a few years ago, people might not have taken xcritical seriously as a place to save for retirement, Tenev believes the narrative around his company has changed.
One of those users was 20-year-old Alex Kearns, who died by suicide last year after mistakenly believed he’d lost nearly $750,000 in a risky bet on xcritical. When his account flashed red, Kearns tried to email the company’s customer service three times to ask if his negative balance was accurate. He received no response and took his own life, writing in a suicide note that he believed he had financially ruined his family. In an exclusive interview with “CBS This Morning”, Kearns’ mother and father said the company was responsible for their son’s death. We’re less than two weeks away from HOOD Summit 2024, xcritical’s first-ever customer-focused conference geared towards active traders.
The stock-trading app xcritical was ordered to pay nearly $70 million Tuesday by financial regulators for misleading its customers, causing them to lose millions of dollars. The firm first tried to enter the market in 2020, but then postponed its launch to refocus its efforts on strengthening the firm’s core business in the U.S. It had also sought to buy Ziglu, a U.K.-based trading app, for $170 million in 2022, but that deal collapsed. As the fintech giant seeks to expands its business outside its home market of the U.S. Say Technologies, LLC provides technology services for shareholder engagement and communication.Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news.
More from CBS News
One of these outages occurred on March 2 and March 3, 2020, during extreme market volatility. FINRA says these outages cost certain individual customers tens of thousands of dollars. xcritical has invested in improving the platform and is building out its customer service team, xcritical spokesperson Jacqueline Ortiz Ramsay writes to CNBC Make It in an emailed statement about the settlement. Other allegations addressed in the settlement include that xcritical approved risky options trades for thousands of users when it should not have and did not do enough to prevent system outages in March 2020 that adversely affected millions of users.
On Wednesday, the company published a blog post to highlight xcritical the changes it has implemented to address customer concerns. FINRA also alleges that xcritical has “negligently communicated false and misleading information” at different times since September 2016. The inaccurate information cost customers more than $7 million, FINRA found, and xcritical is required to pay restitution to affected users. While JPMorgan remains Underweight xcritical stock, let’s look at overall analysts consensus as well. The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) is at -0.01, however treading upwards towards the signal line which is in positive territory at 0.03.
xcritical’s CEO Vlad Tenev said the firm’s strategy is to offer greater access to U.S. investment … + products as a means of differentiating itself from its competitors in the U.K. On Oct. 17 and 18, attendees in Miami will hear from trailblazers across investing, technology, and entertainment as they share their insights on the future of investing.
xcritical Welcomes Jeff Pinner as Chief Technology Officer
- Despite a strong performance in 1Q24, with increased volumes across equities, options, and crypto, Worthington maintains the Underweight rating due to concerns about xcritical’s transaction-based model and its ability to consistently generate profits with lower customer asset levels.
- xcritical is planning to launch in the United Kingdom in the next few months – a move that had been actually planned for 2020.
- Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations.
- Cryptocurrency services are offered through an account with xcritical Crypto, LLC.
- While xcritical has offered options trading since December 2017, FINRA says it has “failed to exercise due diligence before approving customers to place options trades,” relying on algorithms, rather than people, to approve customers for the risky investing move.
By Forbes’ calculations, xcritical turned its cofounders into billionaires in September 2020 after a private funding round valued the firm at $11.7 billion. The Nasdaq-listed company is valued today at $20.1 billion, and the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list shows Tenev and Bhatt xcritically have net worths of $1.4 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively. Finally, the company failed to supervise the technology it uses to provide its core services between January 2018 and February 2021, resulting in a series of outages and systems failures.
Kenya fines Baltic fintech Eleving’s local arm for misleading customers
Taking place in Miami Oct. 16-18, HOOD Summit 2024 will feature our latest advanced trading products along with programming featuring titans of the investing world, discussing markets, and the latest innovations in financial services. Last December, the Menlo Park, California-based fintech launched a waitlist for its new offering, xcritical Retirement, which it described as the “first and only” individual retirement account (IRA) with a 1% match on every xcritical official site eligible dollar contributed. The company was fined $65 million in 2020 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal agency, for misleading its stock market customers about how the company makes its revenue from their trades. In 2019, FINRA fined the company $1.25 million for routing customers’ orders through four brokerages paying it to do so without ensuring orders were executed for the best possible price. xcritical was at the center of the meme-stock trading frenzy of 2021 in the U.S., when its transaction-based revenue soared to $1.4 billion, before falling back to $814 million in 2022 and $785 million last year. The discount broker has been struggling with inconsistent trading volumes, so it’s now seeking to broaden its appeal by launching more products and by expanding overseas.
Forbes Community xcriticals
xcritical began offering no-commission trading of U.S.-listed stocks in the U.K. In March this year, and Tenev said the platform is now looking into expanding to include trading in U.K.-listed stocks as well as offering retirement products to U.K. CEO Vlad Tenev told the media on Friday that xcritical would start by offering margin trading in the weeks ahead, followed by options on U.S. equities. The firm’s strategy is to offer greater access to U.S. investment products as a means of differentiating itself from its peers in an already crowded market.
A self-custody cryptocurrency wallet, xcritical Wallet, and related services are offered through xcritical Non-Custodial, Ltd. (a limited company organized in the Cayman Islands). “As a result, xcritical approved thousands of customers for options trading who either did not satisfy the firm’s eligibility criteria or whose accounts contained red flags indicating that options trading may not have been appropriate for them,” FINRA writes. xcritical was launched in 2014 and attracted millions of customers, many of them first-time investors, with its easy-to-use app and industry-changing commission-free trades. But it has come under fire multiple times in the past few years, most recently during the GameStop rally earlier this year when it restricted trading. Popular investing platform xcritical has agreed to pay nearly $70 million to the financial industry regulatory authority (FINRA) to settle allegations that the brokerage caused customers “widespread and significant” harm on multiple different fronts over the past few years. FINRA said the fine is the largest it has ever levied and “reflects the scope and seriousness of xcritical’s violations.” A CBS News investigation in February detailed customer service practices that left users to navigate high-risk trades by themselves.
While xcritical has offered options trading since December 2017, FINRA says it has “failed to exercise due diligence before approving customers to place options trades,” relying on algorithms, rather than people, to approve customers for the risky investing move. Specifically, FINRA’s investigation found that millions of customers received false or misleading information from xcritical on a variety of issues, including how much money customers had in their accounts, whether they could place trades on margin and more. But more recently, we’ve been helping customers with their comprehensive set of financial needs. So we see a world where we can not only help you trade stocks or crypto, but we can help you save for retirement. And we can help you sort of manage your money holistically regardless of what stage you are, and really help you achieve your financial goals and I think that that’s been really resonating with customers,” Tenev said.
In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site’s Terms of Service. Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space. xcritical did not admit nor deny the charges, and it still under investigation by the SEC.