COMPANY 

Name: Magma Trading 

Legal: Magma Trading USA, LLC

Location: New York City, New York 

Founded: 2016 

Founder(s): George Hessler 

Website: https://www.magmatrading.com/ 

Social Media: 55 Followers on LinkedIn, 17 Followers on Twitter

Introduction 

Magma Trading is an Alternate Trade System (ATS) platform for large-block trade, which the company claims is the world’s first platform for bulk stock trading. Magma aims to ease bulk trading of stocks by changing the processes and rules of equity trading as opposed to that of a stock exchange. What would traditionally take a huge number of small trades spread over multiple hours at the exchanges, Magma claims to make that trade possible in one transaction made in a millisecond. 

The Product 

While most startups are going in for a share of the ever-evolving pie of B2C transactions, Magma decided to go for the lesser noticed mammoth – institutional transactions. Their platform is a first of its kind that allows institutional brokers and market makers to leverage the power of aggregation and transact transparently. 

Using Magma’s platform, large to small brokers can input requests for buying or selling a particular stock. These requests can range from firm orders, conditional orders or just be indications of interests. The platform then applies its own set of rules to the requests and if it matches a corresponding order or interest, Magma’s platform helps facilitates this trade. Magma auto-displays all such requests and interests anonymously. 

Origin & Founding Team 

Magma Trading USA, LLC is the technology partner of TOR brokerage LLC. George Hessler, Founder and CEO of Magma Trading, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and has previously served as the CEO of two other companies. Besides this, he has also had a significant stint at Lava Trading – one of the first technology companies in the equity trading space. 

Performance and Trends 

The SEC has given Magma’s ATS a go ahead, and as on July 2019 the platform is being used by the top 5-10 market makers. Magma has a price per share revenue model like any other exchange. It does, however, claim to charge lesser than exchanges and trade in bigger sizes, making it a win-win for large-volume traders. 

Magma Trading was selected for the 2019 cohort of the Fintech innovation LAB in NY. In 2018, Magma won the NYC New venture competition hosted by Harvard Business School and in May 2019, CIO Outlook magazine listed Magma Trading as one of the top 10 trading solutions to look out for.