Webull – Daven Kross Webinars

Most people’s entire relationship with the market is just with a green button in an app. But that’s not the case for Weeble’s head of AI and CEO of Weeble Technologies. He’s handling everything behind that green button. The rails that let software touch the market, the intelligence that can read it and explain it if you let it, trade it in plain English, plus everything that comes next. I’m Allison and today on Market Conversations, we’re going to get into open APIs, API agents, Vega, and what your money will look like 10 years from now, all with the person actually building it. Jack Keading, the head of AI and CEO of Weeble Technologies. Thank you for being here, Jack. Great to be here, Alison. Let’s get into what your role entails and what is Weeble Technologies. Absolutely. So, excited to be here. Uh talk a bit about Weeble Technologies. Uh we’re a startup uh still in many ways and I wear a few hats. So as part of Weeble Technologies, I cover our AI, our UIUX. Uh I also lead our Weeble institutional business and am the senior manager here in our St. Pete uh Florida headquarters. That’s a mouthful, just a bit many hats. Yeah, I’d say a few spinning plates, but uh it’s an exciting exciting role. Yeah, it sounds it. So what is your day-to-day like? Day-to-day? So, uh, we’ll get to work on a lot of different areas. Uh, that includes new product, which I’m excited to talk about today. Um, a lot of, uh, people management as well. So, we’ve got, uh, about 200 people here in St. Pete, Florida. And, um, many of those managers roll up into me. So, it’s not just all software and AI. We are still dealing with people. Yes. Many people problems. And, uh, I also have our our risk team, our institutional group uh, rolling into me. So, a little bit of business, a little bit of operations and uh product as well. Okay. Well, you did mention a lot of things just now and all the hats that you wear. So, let’s start at the beginning and discuss what open API is. Yeah, absolutely. So, uh open API, uh it’s a feature that’s been around at Weeble for a while. Um historically, it is a capability to expose certain connections to the public uh that would allow them to interact with their Weeble account through software. So uh for many years that required you to know uh a coding language. Python uh was Weeble’s um way to allow engineers, developers to create software that would interact with their account. Uh with Chat GBT and the other uh AI developments in recent history, uh this has changed uh the game so to speak that you don’t need to be necessarily an engineer to interact with open API. Well, I was going to ask you who’s using Open API because when I first looked at it, it’s a little intimidating if you don’t know how to do all of those things because it does look like you’re coding software. So, to start it was uh not a huge number of people. You needed to kind of have technical expertise and um it was something we’d made available. um hadn’t been really uh I would say a wide market that was attracted to it uh because of that you know high level barrier to entry with the the ad the uh increase in capabilities for LLMs for the connectors um which we’ll get into a lot of these terms today um it’s opened the floodgates so we now see u you know thousands of customers engaging uh through the open API um it’s a kind of a a change in what used to be mobile was the way you interacted. Uh we’ve now expanded the the platform into this API uh connectivity. Um and that includes direct clients also includes partners or uh connect API partners who can use our API to build B to C or their platform is then connected by other customers. So it’s kind of fits both. Yeah. And he said something really interesting cuz I would have thought the opposite that it would go from desktop to mobile and you’re saying it went the opposite way. So the the way I think about it is that we’ve kind of expanded the surface area. So you know the the history of brokerage you had to pick up your phone and call your broker. Then we moved into this mobile area era where you could log on to a website and log in and place a trade. Uh then yeah, I’m cutting out decades here, but you you shift to mobile, all of a sudden it’s in your pocket with you all the time. Uh now we’re entering a AI era of technology where mobile isn’t going anywhere and a lot of customers, most of our customers are still engaged in a mobile first way. This is a new kind of way to interact with your financial life and it’s growing very quickly. So how broad that adoption is I think remains to be seen long term. Right. Well well I’m sure it’s coming up quicker than we think but like you said you know this is becoming so popular and so many more people are in getting involved in this. How is open API affecting the markets? So the markets are is it is that happening? Um it’s a good question. I think it is affecting the markets. We’ve seen a few things. um my new favorite marketing term, flywheel. But there’s been some regulatory uh developments that coincided with the technology advancements. Um so the pattern day trade rule was something that had uh plagued uh many retail investors, particularly small retail investors. Um when there were their account was under $25,000, there were limits on how they could trade, right? uh those rules have changed slightly opening up the avail ability for them to trade uh much more frequently throughout the day. Something that you know uh I think uh a bit of classicism removed where um young active trader um maybe didn’t have the balance sheet that rule that 25k was in place for a long time. Uh now it’s been removed. So, opens up the ability for maybe a college student who just wants to test out a new uh theory um to use their account to do that and uh they’re not limited the same way they used to be. Okay, interesting. So, with that mindset, would you say open API is more of a product or is it a strategy or is it both? Again, good question. So, uh I would view it as a product uh maybe because I’m in a product chair and I view things as products. So this is a uh new way for our clients to engage with a Weeble account starting you know if you want to check your balance on a regular basis you can connect if you want to submit uh trade information and prepare to submit that order or submit that order straight through you have that ability. So it’s a product in the sense that it’s a way for our clients to interact with our platform. Um it’s something that we’ve gotten a lot of interest uh inbound about. Um and I think at times um we’ve been we are one of the leaders and at times I think maybe we’ve been the leader in the space. You should never get in front of a bull. It’s a bad idea. So um you know it’s exciting for us to be we have active traders as one of our key client bases and um kind of being giving them a leading product um is exciting place to be. You mentioned how you’re seeing users interact with the product with open API. Is there anything that you’ve seen them create or a strategy, a tool that you were like, whoa, I didn’t think of that. Yeah, so that this is the kind of sandbox um element to it. And um the way me I’m not a I’m not writing Python. I’m not writing my own trading bots. Um but I you know, in the back of my head, I think, oh, I could run a hedge fund. I I read the newspaper. I have all these ideas about where Jackie is going and and this and that and um if only I had the time or the traders to work for me to kind of execute what I think uh I should do because um we talked about a few hats I wear at Weeble. I don’t just sit in front of my screen uh trading my personal account all day. That’s not one of the uh parts of the job. So the ability now to create these different strategies through the open API uh and then let them run autonomously, let them run with your supervision um is pretty exciting. As a investor, you might have a few different theories. you want to uh have 50% of your portfolio, be a very conservative um steady buying into the S&P 500 index, but you might want to take 10% and have your research agent go out and comb the market for, you know, one to 100 opportunities. Um you have that ability to simultaneously implement strategies um in a very kind of a hands-off or high power way. Well, so how do you balance that supervision to the user where okay, you’re doing this, you’re making these decisions, but maybe I should chime in. You’re doing this wrong. Do you find it hard to Absolutely. So, uh, my career started in compliance. So um I find uh you know I’m always bringing that compliance uh eye to some of these discussions where um the there are new risks created by uh open API and um you know you can have a a runaway situation where a novice trader or novice engineer doesn’t really understand the Frankenstein uh trading bot that they’ve built. all of a sudden it’s doing things that they didn’t expect. So that is uh certainly a risk. Weeble as the broker has a lot of responsibility around controlling that account. So the buying power for example, we couldn’t let a customer with $1,000 go out and buy a million dollars worth of something. We will check at every point that they are in a position to fund the purchase that they’re attempting to make. um if there’s velocity of orders coming in, we have controls uh on our APIs so that customers who bump into these uh limits uh it’s setting off alerts either for them or for us internally um if we see strategies that look uh manipulative or suspicious, we’ll take action as well. So, our compliance team um you know their their job got a little more complicated as this product came to life and has grown. Um but it’s not something we weren’t prepared for. Um it’s high frequency trading and API trading has been around for for a long time. the expansion of the access to it is the new twist and um we had to bring some of those kind of controls and capabilities into the more traditional point-and-click retail space. Uh but it’s been something that they were up to the challenge and uh um something we’ve thought about throughout the process. Yeah, you beat me to it cuz I wanted to bring up your compliance background and you know this is kind of a whole new world with technology and all these different programs and it must have been a difficult transition to some degree of you know finding all these nuances and little things to watch and make sure okay this isn’t what you should be doing. Yeah, I think it’s a it’s a new role for me personally kind of taking on the uh business perspective uh and you know pushing certain uh business points. Um I work with a lot of my former team in compliance so we already have kind of good working relationships there. Um, I think the challenge layered into that is it’s new technology and a lot of uh while Weeble wants to be out there at the front of the pack offering kind of the latest and greatest um it’s also brings you know what exactly is being released um by our partners or so it kind of comes back to keeping our house in order and those compliance controls, trade surveillance, market access. We need to make sure that our suite of controls is uh tight and you know what the client is then able to build outside of the open API is something we’re kind of prepared to um monitor. Yeah, I would hope so and then assume that takes a lot of time and involvement. But you brought up control and you know you’re using all of these new programs software getting AI involved. you know, who should be making the final choice on these deals? Should it be from the human or are we like, okay, you made the choice, you know? Yeah, sure. I I think this where my compliance background helps here in that um Weeble, most of our customers are self-directed. So, every trade, every order, um it’s their choice. And if they want to use a certain tool to empower them, Yeah. Uh I I look back not so long ago where like recurring investment was kind of a a cutting edge feature. You could say I want to buy $100 of this every Monday and that was a somewhat set it and forget it uh tool that clients could use. Um this very similar is just much more dynamic in the capabilities. But for the self-directed clients, this is just another tool for them to use. They may be taking the analysis and taking the input, but Weeble especially Weeble Financial is not the one giving them the recommendations and the advice on what to do. I think we’re have a uh a RAIA or an investment advisor, robo advisor as part of the Weeble family. uh we look at that as maybe there’s an opportunity to provide that advice to provide that guidance to clients to say um we’ve done the analysis and we think this is the best for you uh and giving AI the capability to do that for certain clients in certain cases um is a kind of a new frontier um so it’s it’s kind of split between the two regulatory sides is it self-directed or are you hiring ing an adviser to help you manage your money. But at the end of the day, it’s your choice where your money goes. At the end of the day, it’s the client’s choice. Um, if they select the adviser, they’ve they’ve chosen that advisor. Weeble hasn’t kind of made that for them, right? But so let’s hypothetical. What if you know someone makes a bad choice and they’re or because they misread something they so now they messed up their whole trading plan for the day. Is it their fault? Are they coming back on the broker? Are they coming back at the AI? What happens there? Yeah, it’s a good question. And the uh electronic trading world is um built on software. So, uh software is not without bugs. We do our absolute best to get some pest control, try to clear out the pests and get the pesticide out there. Uh but the, you know, risks, especially with the open API, are magnified. So I think the the challenge there on the traditional side would be you’re a customer and you you know tried to buy a 100 shares of Apple. Weeble system malfunctioned and you ended up with 10,000 shares. You know we would own that issue. That’s our bad. Um the concern I think is where the open API then outside of the Weeble environment is being uh connected to by the customer if they make a mistake on their side of uh outside of Weeble. How would we know uh as a broker that they actually meant to only buy 100 or they typed in the wrong symbol or they their AI that’s using the open API kind didn’t follow what they thought it was going to do or what they had intended it to do. So that uh there’s a lot of risk disclosures and legal ease around this but the clients at the end of the day are responsible for their account. they’re responsible for their uh credentials if they opt to use open API. They’re aware that it’s bringing new risks. Um it has a lot of upside as well. So uh definitely some balance there. Yeah. And I think it’s important for people to know that going in, right? It’s not just the magical world. And maybe maybe one uh great place to start for customers is we’ve launched a paper trading uh platform for the open API. So, you can take your paper trading account and test out some strategies with the open API, monitor it. We’ll give you I think it’s about a million dollars in play money. Uh not your money, but you can test the strategies, make sure the thing you’re designing is working as you intended before you uh give it real money and put that at risk. I think that’s a great concept. Have you been seeing success with that? We have. that was just launched uh a few weeks ago and uh I think it’s a necessary uh step for a lot of people who are coming new to this area. Well, let’s talk about launches because you’ve done a lot of them lately. So, we’ve had Vega, which I wanted to get into, but we had Vega, then there’s Vega Analyst and Vega portfolio. So, let’s talk about Vega first. Excellent. So, Vega is our uh old friend now, but Vega is the first AI product uh that we launched for our customers really uh first as a client service uh tool to help you if your account was restricted, why is my account restricted? AI was able to through Vega uh solve some of those customer service customer service tickets lower hanging fruit. uh quickly uh we moved Vega towards more of a decision partner or uh support trade support or uh co-pilot throughout your Weeble experience. So uh we Vega then becomes a somebody you can ask questions to. You can ask about financial products. You can ask about the market in general. You can ask about specific stocks, trends you’re seeing, theories you have, um more specifics about the the options ladder and certain Greeks uh within that options ladder. So extremely uh capable uh knowledgeable financial trading assistant for your Weeble uh journey. So depending on what a a client wants, if they’re an active trader uh trading options or they’re more of a long-term investor, the Vega co-pilot can be like a conversation that they can have a chatbot experience with. And we’ve seen uh tens of millions of engagements with it. Many customers uh very uh deep in conversation with it on you know how to trade, how they can implement the strategy they’re thinking about. Now, how does that compare to Vega analyst or is that all in one? Uh Vegas, there’s different aspects of Vega, correct? Vegas, uh you’ll see all over the place that I think kind of the umbrella uh AI uh client uh tool Vega analyst one specific skill within the Vega uh overall world. Uh this is kind of a research analyst. So it will provide deep research custom reports um more similar to what you would get as like a stock research desk. It’s going to give you a very excuse me very thorough in-depth analysis on a single stock and the user is able to customize uh how that report is generated and kind of do their research up of uh what they analyst is doing. So this is a new feature. Um it has uh different uh payment tiers. So if you become an avid user of it uh because of the underlying kind of token costs around producing the more deep thinking um there are different costs associated to it than Vega which is just free for all users. Makes sense. So make me think harder. You got to pay for it. You got to pay for the good answers. That’s a good thing to know. So when then when it comes to Vega portfolio now that’s described as an AI powered portfolio advisor. So now we’re dealing with three different types. Yes. So uh Vega portfolio we talked a little about the RAIA and the investment adviser with a Weeble Vega portfolio starts to bring in those concepts of giving the investor some guidance around their portfolio. So does their portfolio fit with their individual profile? If I am a if I say in my questionnaire that I’m very risk averse and I have long-term um you know my or near-term capital leads uh but I’m trading you know uh a very aggressive strategy, volatile stocks, penny stocks. Um, the Vega portfolio is going to be able to kind of give you a a view of your activity versus what you say that you uh your profile is. And it will also kind of give you guidance on what are some things that might suit your particular background. So, okay, if you’re really new to investing, uh this is a great tool to find some kind of basic ETFs or a good way to get started. In all three of these, you know, you’re getting advice and information, but where’s the line drawn where you’re not overly giving too much advice, you know, I’m sure that’s in the programming of how it’s created. Yes. So, that’s under the hood and uh in some of the fine print on the disclosure side as well. We’ve got those disclosure. We we do a we make sure the client knows which tool they’re interacting with and which regulated entity they’re interacting with. Um again the compliance uh uh DNA that I have that’s kind of built into things. Um so our prompts um the underlying logic within Vega and the different Vega skills all kind of follow the flow uh based on you know which skill is being used and which regulatory um entity is being impacted. It’s all really incredible because you launched this November of last year and you’ve already created so many products within it. Is there anything that you’ve seen clients and users use it for that you were surprised or anything you didn’t expect? I think the adoption was uh shocking for me. I did not expect to see kind of the hockey stick curve which uh in fintech that’s you know you always want to experience that. All right. So, we got to see clients not really in the uh customer service ticketing side. Once we stepped beyond that into more of the co-pilot for the platform, uh we saw that’s where we saw the millions and tens of millions of interactions and uh clients really enjoy and using the tool uh a lot. In your compliance side of things, is there anything you’ve seen or that you’ve programmed that VA won’t answer? Yes. And it won’t take you long if you’re using Vega to hit some of those guard rails. So compliance-wise, now that that’s the goal, just wanting to know if there’s a fine line in a boundary. Absolutely. So if you say uh Vega, should I buy Google? Uh you’re going to run into compliance uh stock language. So of that kind of decision tree that’s been built out for how the AI uh will answer your question. There are many deadends that uh compliance is sitting behind say we can’t answer that because X Y or Z. So so it comes out specifically and says that we can answer. Okay. So um maybe not the answer everyone wants to see. Clients are looking for more. They’re looking for direction. They’re looking for help. But on the regulatory side, we needed to kind of design that uh framework. Of course, it’s an AI, not a magical, right? Absolutely. Are there um when it comes to Vega, are there things that Vega can’t see that a chart could see for, you know, a chart veteran or vice versa? Absolutely. I think it’s still a uh you know a way to well some traders will uh religiously view charts and uh follow the market with a very emotional uh pulse. So uh kind of feeling the market in a uh sixth sense kind of way. Um, so plenty of traders like that. More uh analytical or datadriven strategies. I think AI there is really where you’re seeing uh AI’s capabilities come through. So uh one kind of an analyzing large amounts of data um that would take humans a long time to get through AI can do it relatively quickly. uh have figuring out that six sense of when a market is going to move. Um I think AI is not quite there. Maybe there’s still some human uh human, you know, uh a human touch, human touch to it, involvement. Yeah. So it really depends on your strategy. I think as traders study their own activity, they can leverage AI for that as well. Okay. Um, and I think uh, Vega is useful for that as we’ve expanded the ability it has to see into your account and your trading history. Um, well, let’s talk about that. How it can see into your account. How personalized is Vega getting for each individual user? Yeah, so it’s it’s a overarching model. Um, but it does have access into certain points related to your account. So, um certain traits within your investor profile, uh certain data around your holdings, uh your trading history, uh Vega does have the ability to call in and see that. Um, and I I liken it to the way a client service rep might uh pick up a phone call and go into our back office system and look up an account number and find an answer for a customer. Um, Vega has the ability to kind of take those steps. I think it’s it’s good to know that it’s watching everything because you don’t want them coming up with their answers just like all the way out of left field. You know, it’s kind of staying in competition with the other AI services that are out there now that you know, they all kind of figure out who you are and what benefits you the most. So, it only makes sense it started coming into the market. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it’s uh many aspects of life are are being impacted now. um you know there’s traders uh have different schools of thought and traders are not all alike. Uh but I think the to the monitoring point uh the ability to not lose money is as important or more important for a trader than it is to hit the home runs. So, uh, having Vega be able to monitor your account and, um, on a regular basis, uh, either through the open API, um, or just in the system is is important. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be losing. That’s not the goal. So when it comes to, you know, your compliance background and regulators getting adjusted to working with this type of technology, is there anything that you wish that they knew moving forward to kind of either like back off and let you have more access to creating things or do you think they’ve been adjusting well to the new systems? Yeah, I would uh give uh FINRA and our regulators a real kudos. um they have kept an open mind about AI from really day one. Um we’ve had open dialogue with them dating back years now starting with kind of the earliest implementations of uh here’s a news article Vega has the ability to summarize that news article and it creates novel questions. Um, and I think where it’s easy, and I I’m a former regulator, it’s easier for a regulator to say no and kind of squash um what’s new and uh kind of not understood or new and risky. Um, they’ve been on the other side. They’ve been very kind of open-minded, um, transparent. We got to work through these issues. Um there’s requests out right now from FINRA for comments around uh how to review advertisements and uh how to review advertisements in the context of AI where things are much more dynamic real time maybe personalized um that the traditional model of if you’re sending an ad out to 26 people needs to go through a compliance officer um and get a stamp from that officer. are there new ways that we can use AI for these uh new capabilities? So, uh I think they’ve they’ve been very uh open-minded and kind of forward thinking on this. So, uh I don’t have really any complaints on it. I think there’s uh certainly risk and we’ve tried to communicate with FINRA throughout these steps of whether it’s the trading or manipulative trading compliance um bringing these kind of new elements very quickly to the the retail space. No, that’s great to hear because you want to stay up with what’s going on in the industry and stay competitive and so it’s good that they’re on board and not holding anything back. So, with everything we’ve discussed with Vega, it really seems like it’s moving along very quickly and keeping that hockey stick uh uh uphill that you mentioned keep going. Is there anything new to come that you can share with us? There’s a a long road map uh on its way. I think with uh Vega portfolio analysts we were talking about, that’s a um skill that’s going to continue to see uh more and more capabilities through the end of the year. Um, we have some very exciting new products uh to launch in early Q4, which I won’t get into just yet. Oh, come on. Just a little bit. But, uh, I think we’re we’re excited the the amount of data that we plan to feed into Vega, uh, and then allow our users to, um, leverage and create trading strategies and alerts and, uh, new actions for them. um it’s only going to grow. I’m excited to see what’s happening and what’s going to happen. So, what do you think the future is going to look like? You know, like let’s say we’re in like 2031. We still look as good as we do right now and a young 20some is opening their brokerage account for the first time. Is there an app? Is Vegas still present? What do you think it’s going to be like? I’ll probably be a little skinnier. Um just but the uh experience I kind of liken it to like we were talking about before the desktop the mobile I do think there’s I mean my own uh growing up kind of through mobile um I was logging into facebook.com when Facebook came out right uh that changed over time uh so I do think we’re going to see a big shift uh in favor of the AI or open API being the primary way you interact with your financial services and your accounts. Uh that might just be consolidation so you can track all the things that are important at once. Uh there might be an AI in your pocket that’s tracking those for you and only messaging you when things are important. Um we all might be wearing brain helmets and there’s no, you know, thought needed to go into it other than what happens. Scary scary thought. Remember, the human still has to make the final choice. Yes. Are you still going to believe that? On the Weeble Financial, I will believe that forever. Okay, good answer. Is there anything about your day-to-day with all this technology that you’re surrounded with? Does anything ever keep you up at night about it? the uh markets have changed, the retail markets especially uh where they used to be uh during market hours. I think if you’re an institutional trader uh you’re probably uh 24 hours following global markets before but for retail and particularly uh managing a retail platform with the addition of uh overnight trading with the addition of uh autonomous or or API trading uh and then now new products being introduced whether it’s futures whether it’s our prediction markets uh those are trading during the Super Bowl. So, uh, we have not a lot of downtime. So, I think that, you know, 24 by7 is here to stay. Um, it means, uh, I don’t really get to like unplug that much. Yeah, it doesn’t sound like it. No. So, I have to work on it. So, that’s what’s keeping you up at night. That makes sense. Well, this has been fantastic. I want to end with a fun little rapid fire. Okay. So, just give me like a one-word response to what I’m going to say to you. Okay. One word for market structure in 2030. Uh, quick, quick, quick. Have another sip of coffee. Um, growth. Okay. Most overhyped term in fintech right now? AI. A book or paper that changed how you think about markets or AI? The Bitcoin white paper. Oh, interesting. Okay. The regulation you’re gladest that it exists. Reg. the first thing you ask a new AI model to do. Um, help me arrange my calendar. And there you have it. Well, thank you for making space for us in your calendar. This was fantastic. I enjoyed hearing everything that’s going on in Weeble Technologies. Thank you for today. This has been great and uh look forward to doing it again. So, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, send it to a friend who’s constantly asking a chatbot what to do with their money. And let us know in the comments, would you let an AI agent place a trade for you? I’m Alison and I’ll see you next time.

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