12A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 1

Business Idea Recap (condensed): A software that analyses people’s facial expressions as they trade to prevent trades that are likely to lose money when producing certain facial traits.

Picking a segment: Keyword: Retail-trader

A section that might exist in my venture market is retail-traders, whose primary income is personal capital gains (people who make money trading in the market). All my interviewers are traders who rely on their on their portfolio’s performance to meet ends meet. Traders who only trade use personal decision base trades, no algorithms that buy or sell the securities for them. One of the traders I interviewed is a student at NYU, who pays tuition solely on profit made from his portfolio. He consistently has drawbacks in his portfolio that he has categorized as emotional drawbacks. The same problem occurs to a front-line trader who works for a hedge fund in New York who trades with emotion from time to time. Some of his most significant losses were the fear of missing out on opportunities, and thus, he purchased with feeling. The last person I interviewed is a UF student whose primary income (no other job) is trading in the market and has been trading for the previous two years. She believes she always mixes her emotions with her trading.

Interviews:

In the interviews, I made sure that the three traders’ primary income was from the market. All three of them were more than aware that they had the unmet need to have a way to manage their emotion while trading. When presented with the idea, they were surprised and thought it was a great innovation if it worked properly for different individuals.

What I learned in the interviews:

I learned that the demand for some product that suppresses human emotion while trading is high. The traders I interviewed said they would love the product; however, one was concerned with whether it worked properly with different people. All three of them found it difficult to this day to trade in the market with their money and have emotional ties to it. The student at NYU was more than willing to pay for the service if it worked correctly as well as the other two. One said she is unsure of what to do to find a solution to this problem. Again, I realized that the three people I interviewed solely make money in the market. If there was a way to increase someone’s salary by a considerable amount, they would pay for it. The three traders, when asked, “what are a few ways to cope with your emotion?” said they either listen to a podcast for advice, or any articles that give solid routines to go through that will tell them that they are trading with emotion. There is no product that connects personally to the trader’s emotion and who they are as a person.

How I would describe this segment:

Retail-traders, from novice to expert, trade with emotion from time to time. I believe that there are a lot of traders who are trying to find a way to suppress their emotions when trading their money. In this segment, most traders would pay for this software because, in the end, it will potentially increase their performance of their portfolio. Basically, any retail-traders who are trying to suppress their emotion will search google, podcast, etc. for ways to suppress their emotion in trading.