Stock trading start-up targets ‘Gen Z’ with social investing app

A START-UP targeting “Gen Z” traders is attempting to recreate last year’s hype around “meme stocks” after raising $40m (£33m) from investors, including the billionaire Peter Thiel.

The company, Shares, has launched what it calls a “social trading” app, a combination of social media apps such as Tiktok or Twitter with a Bloomberg investing terminal.

The Shares app allows users to publicise trades, share them with friends, and discuss potential investments in the same app. It is likely to be seen as an effort to capitalise on the investing craze that triggered a jump last year in meme stocks such as Gamestop, powered by retail investors co-ordinating their actions in online forums.

The Shares mobile phone app launched in the UK in May this year and has since received 150,000 downloads.

Stock trading apps, such as Robinhood and Freetrade, have raised hundreds of millions of pounds as amateur traders pile into shares such as Apple or Tesla. Robinhood, the US stock trading app, went public last year at a valuation of $32bn (£26bn), although it has since slumped more than 70pc amid a market sell-off. Shares said the majority of its users, 66pc, were from “Generation Z”, typically under the age of 25.

Its funding round was led by Valar Ventures, an early Transferwise investor, co-founded by Mr Thiel, bringing the company’s investment to $90m. Mr Thiel was an early investor in Facebook and co-founded payments company Paypal and big data company Palantir.

While initially focused on allowing access to popular US stocks, Benjamin Chemla, Shares chief executive, said the company was also considering adding cryptocurrencies to the app. The firm makes money charging a fee on trades.