This article was written by Ran Amiran, President of SpotOption.
There is no arguing that there has been a major financial technology revolution over the past few years. Only a decade ago, we were completely oblivious to crowd funding, peer to peer landing, Bitcoin , Blockchain protocols, and many more financial innovations. One of the most innovative, and fascinating instrument that has been called the rising star is binary options. Binary options have played one of the most intricate roles in revolutionizing the derivative trading industry, by bringing it to the layman, to the masses.
No longer is derivative trading restricted to professional brokers or investors; binary options has made it so that anyone can be a trader.
Binary options is actually a derivative product that has been used by professional investors for decades. It comprises the bulk of the global OTC derivatives market with a national value of $500 trillion. Just for comparison, the size of the global stock market is only $62 trillion. The Warren Buffett company, Berkshire Hathaway, posted $633 million in gains from derivatives contracts last year, up from $329 million in 2014.
However, rising interest in fintech has created user-friendly binary options platforms, so that not only big investors can use derivative instruments, but basically anyone with the slightest interest in the market who has a 3G signal.
Henceforth, the uprising of the retail derivative trader in the last few years is due to the progress in the technology infrastructure and cost reductions. The average U.S. internet speed has more than tripled since 2011 from 10 Mbps to 31 Mbps.
The cost of cloud infrastructure has dropped more than 90% over the last decade.
All of these changes and more have made trading derivatives available not only to fortune 500 companies and billionaires, but also for the regular internet surfer with a credit card. Today there are millions of retail binary options traders.
As the technology continues to develop, and to support the continuous and expanding innovate demands of retail derivatives, there is a movement of major companies joining the industry, such as the NYSE Amex Options platform.
“The introduction of Binary Return Derivatives, or ByRDs, on NYSE Amex Options gives investors access to a new, simple income-generation tool with the same level of flexibility as standard listed options, plus a straightforward, fixed return,” said NYSE Head of Options Ivan Brown. “We’re excited to offer investors these innovative and solutions-driven investing tools.”
"We are living in an exciting time that the rapid growth of technology innovation keeps us alert every day," says Ran Amiran, President of SpotOption.
