The LSE Directory / Charting platforms
Trade Ideas is a US based financial technology company that builds a real-time stock and ETF scanning, charting, and trading analytics platform aimed at self directed active and day traders. Its infrastructure monitors trade data across the US stock and ETF universe in real time and lets users build custom scans with a no-code formula editor, then act on results through integrated charting, alerting, paper trading, and backtesting tools. The company states its software is developed entirely by an in-house US based engineering team. The platform's signature feature is Holly, a virtual trading assistant that runs a large set of named, rules-based strategies (Trade Ideas' own site documents roughly 48 of them, covering both long and short setups such as pattern breakouts, pullbacks, and volume anomalies) against historical and overnight market data, then surfaces a curated set of intraday entry, stop, and target levels for the next session. This pairing of scanning with an automated, continuously re-backtested signal engine, rather than static filters alone, is how the company differentiates itself within the retail charting and scanning category. The platform also offers direct order routing to supported third party brokerages, including Interactive Brokers, E*TRADE, TradeStation, and Alpaca, so a signal generated on the platform can be acted on without leaving it; Trade Ideas itself is not a broker-dealer and does not hold customer funds. The company traces to the early 2000s: Trade Ideas' own site and multiple business registries date it to 2003, though some secondary sources describe a 2002 launch. It was co-founded by Dan Mirkin along with David Aferiat and Philip Smolen; Dan Mirkin remains CEO, with Brad Williams as COO and Shari Mirkin as CFO per the company's current leadership page. The company is privately held and headquartered in Encinitas, California. It has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private US companies in multiple years, including a specific 2020 ranking of number 3109. As of mid 2026 the product continues to center on the Holly AI signal engine alongside a broadened "AI Signals" marketing push and a conversational AI assistant layered onto the existing scanner and charting toolset, reflecting the wider retail trading industry's shift toward AI branded features; the company has not published specific subscriber, AUM, or performance figures that could be independently verified in this pass.
