It’s been a while since I’d heard anything from William Yeh of SogoInvest, so I thought I’d drop by the website and snoop around a bit. To my surprise, SogoInvest has changed its name to SogoTrade.

Mr. Yeh, CEO of SogoTrade, states in a letter to clients that the name change is an effort to align the brand identity more effectively with the business focus and core strengths. He goes on to say that:

SogoTrade will afford greater clarity by powerfully expressing our enduring qualities of innovation, service, and value while also expressing our business focus – providing advanced trading technology at low commissions to meet the needs of traders and investors alike. -Source

Along with the name change, the website has been relocated to www.SogoTrade.com and has been given a face lift and features a more sophisticated user interface and more comprehensive trading functionality.

SogoInvest started out as a low-cost competitor in an already over-populated online discount brokerage market. Backed by technology stemming from Genesis Securities, they are bringing professional trading tools to the individual investor.

Since I my last post about SogoInvest, SogoTrade has added no-fee dividend reinvestment plans to the ballot, which was a major sticking point during the last discussion on the brokerage.

SogoTrade is expanding out to offer a platform for just about every level of investor. SogoTrade is the web-based platform featuring the SogoTrade trading center with real time quotes and charts, scheduled investment services, streaming watch lists, free DRIPs, and free ACH deposits and withdrawals.

SogoElite is a downloadable platform powered by Laser, the NASDAQ Platinum rated platform featuring Streaming Level 1 quotes, customizable real-time charts with technical indicators, extended hours trading, a customizable platform interface and real time sales data.

SogoPro is coming soon, but will be a NASDAQ Platinum rated trading application that features Level 2 quotes, direct connections to major ECN’s and market makers, extended hours trading, customizable real-time charts and technical indicators, extended hours trading and time and sales data.

Starting to compete with the major players

It seems that SogoTrade is starting to incorporate many of the features found at it’s competitors like TDAmeritrade and E*Trade. The revamped website helps, and makes it look like a more professional trading interface.

The key to SogoTrade will be longevity. There is some serious consolidation in the online brokerage market right now, which I think is a good thing. If after the dust settles SogoTrade can continue to compete, it will only serve to increase the client base.

Brokers, Investing discount brokers, SogoInvest, SogoTrade, William Yeh

I received an email from Steve Carpenter yesterday. Typically when I receive emails from someone I don’t know, I’m enticed to “file” the message accordingly, however I opened this one, not knowing what to expect.

Steve is the founder and CEO of Cake Financial Corporation.

After reading his email, I found myself intrigued with his new service. Cake is a new online financial service that allows individuals to display their actual portfolio,and keep track of how the portfolio has done over a period of time. It also lets you share your portfolio and real-time trading information with trusted family and friends without ever revealing sensitive personal information like net worth, number of shares, or portfolio sizes.

The way it works is that you link up your brokerage account with Cake, and it keeps track of your performance, and allows you to compare your performance with that of your peers. You can see how others are trading, and even collaborate investment strategies online.

For each Cake member, you can see the overall performance of that persons portfolio over a range of 5 days to 5 years. You can also see what’s on that members watch list, see who’s in their Cake network, and even read their investing journal.

It’s basically a conglomerate of the ultimate financial blog sites. What’s great is that since it’s linked directly to your brokerage account, it lends credibility to your financial performance.

Cake’s number one priority is protecting personal and financial information. Founder and Chief Technical Officer, Doug Reed, has had some experience creating secure financial environments in the past, so he’s got some experience keeping the privacy hacks at bay.

I’ll keep researching Cake, and perhaps have Steven answer a few questions in Corner Office Interview.

Until then, here are some more links to Cake:

Cake Financial Home

Cake Financial Blog

The Cake Financial Players

Cake On Cramer

Brokers, Investing, Stock Research, Stock Thoughts

In a case of what could be over saturation in the online discount brokerage firm field, ex24 has closed up shop.

Back in November of last year, I had a chance to speak with Anthony Link, ex24’s Chief Operating Officer. Bound with excitement, both he and James Lennane, the company’s founder had high expectations for the company.

Perhaps the expectations were too high.

Despite marketing campaigns that included iPod giveaways, free trading periods, guaranteed portfolio performance and access to fractional shares of sought-after stocks such as Google Inc. (GOOG) shortly after its initial public offering, the platform never gained momentum.

“We were looking to go further, faster, which is why we decided to call it a day,” said Anthony Link, the company’s chief operating officer. -Source

The company never made any money, and was being fed a healthy diet of capital by its founder who finally decided he’d had enough.

The company’s website has been shut down, leaving only the following message:

ex24 is sorry to announce that as of May 14, 2007 we are no longer doing business. If you have any concerns about your ex24 Member account please contact Member Support Services at (800) 524-3924.

Thank you.
ex24, Inc.
200 Patriot Way
Naples, Florida 34104
(800) 524-3924

This is a prime example of a failing business plan due to not being able to attract customers. I wouldn’t really call it a failure of marketing per se, but rather a failure of a combination of things that failed to attract any capital.

Profit margins are slim in the discount brokerage sector, and lacking clients means dwindling income.

I was never a big fan of their ATS order book concept. The idea was that individual buyers could be matched up with individual sellers through the platform itself. Effectively this would make a 24 hour market.

The problem with this idea is that it’s only useful if there is liquidity, not only in the stock but in the platform itself. It is useless if there are only 100 traders using ex24 and not one of them wants to buy your 200 shares of Google for anything above market value. The lack of volume and the thin number of available securities doomed this idea from the beginning.

Anyway, ex24 customers had the option of closing out their accounts or being transferred to Vienna, Va., brokerage firm FOLIOfn Inc.

Brokers, Business, Investing, Marketing