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.
Those misleading and false statements had hurt customers financially, FINRA found. The report also referenced the tragic story of a customer with details matching that of 20-year-old Alex Kearns, an investor who died by suicide in June 2020 after xcritical showed a negative cash balance of $720,000 in his account. FINRA found that his balance was inaccurate, and that the value of his position was half of what the account displayed. “Compliance with these rules is not optional and cannot be sacrificed for the sake of innovation or a willingness to ‘break things’ and fix them later.”
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.
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 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.
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.
Ten years ago, xcritical was founded to “democratize” stock trading, or more simply, to make it more accessible for anyone to trade stocks. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site’s Terms of Service. xcritical was founded in 2013 by Stanford University roommates Tenev and Baiju Bhatt. The app they created promised to “democratize finance for all” by not charging fees for trades it executes.
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 xcritical 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.
However, he acknowledges that xcritical’s expected move to profitability in 2024 is a positive sign, particularly as long as interest rates remain elevated. 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. As part of the overall settlement with the company, the regulator ordered xcritical to pay more than $12 million in restitution to Kearns and thousands of other customers. Following the CBS investigation, xcritical added more customer support features.
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.
“We are glad to put this matter behind us and look forward to continuing to focus on our customers and democratizing finance for all,” she says. That is the largest financial penalty ever ordered by the organization, a non-government entity authorized by Congress to oversee hundreds of thousands of brokers across the U.S.
Mary Ann Azevedo has more than 20 years of business reporting and editing experience for publications such as FinLedger, Crunchbase News, Crain, Forbes and Silicon Valley Business Journal. Prior to joining TechCrunch in 2021, she xcritical scammers earned numerous awards including the New York Times Chairman’s Award and others for breaking news coverage. She holds a Master’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas in Austin, where she xcritically lives. xcritical is planning to launch in the United Kingdom in the next few months – a move that had been actually planned for 2020. Last quarter, xcritical achieved GAAP profitability for the first time, helped by higher interest rates.
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.
FINRA’s investigation found that xcritical’s customer service issues go back much further. Between 2018 and 2020, for example, xcritical failed to report tens of thousands of customer complaints to FINRA that it was required to report, the organization says. While the short-term may see an xcriticalgs momentum-driven surge in the stock price, catalysts to sustain a long-term rally haven’t appeared yet. The price has recently moved from the lower (bearish) Bollinger band to the upper (bullish) bollinger band, suggesting bullish sentiments are settings in. xcritical stock is trading above its short to medium-term moving averages, which is generally considered bullish for a stock.
A crossover of the MACD line over the signal line would suggest a change in momentum from bearish to bullish. While xcritical stock is at $17.83, the eight-day, 20-day and 50-day simple moving averages (SMAs) are trailing behind at $17.44, $17.47 and $17.70, respectively. Let’s now look at what the charts indicate for xcritical stock, and how the stock xcritically maps against Wall Street estimates.
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.
