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Dub, a platform that allows retail traders to emulate the investments of notable business and government figures, unveiled a service Thursday that pays select everyday investors to share their portfolios.
Retailers who are accepted into Dub's so-called Top Creator Program receive royalties for user access to their model portfolio. The Creator Program marks Dub's latest push to attract small and large investors to its platform, which encourages users to forego traditional stock picking and instead duplicate other traders' portfolios.
“Fundamentally, we are rethinking the distribution of capital flows to investing talent,” said Steven Wang, founder and CEO of Dub. “We are truly at the beginning of another retail investor revolution.”
Since its launch nearly a year ago, Dub has offered users the ability to track and copy the investment portfolios of people from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California to billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Users who pay $9.99 per month or $89.99 per year can essentially create replicas of these portfolios using their own money held with Dub's broker-dealer.
These portfolios are tracked for changes over time, with all trades automatically mirrored to others who have copied them. In other words, Wang said traders can switch to “autopilot” once they have a copy of someone else's portfolio in hand, eliminating the human error of missing trades.
Previously, users could choose to make their portfolios available for others to copy if they reached a minimum personal investment of $1,000. Now the Creator Program offers a financial incentive for accepted users.
The name of the program can draw comparisons to influencer payment structures from social media platforms like TikTok. Accepted merchants receive a scaling fee that takes multiple social metrics into account. The rate is not based solely on the number of portfolio copies per creator, but this number can be a factor.
The amount of royalties received will be determined individually between Dub and each creator of the program, Wang said.
According to Dub, several dealers were already signed up for the program at the time of launch. Their list includes Andrew Ver Planck, an alumnus of MacKay Shields and Putnam Investments, and Lawrence Fuller, a SeekingAlpha analyst.
Dub requires a minimum deposit of $100, but some portfolios require larger investments to make a copy. The Company's broker-dealer is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The “next generation” of investing influencers
Dub's program comes amid a boom in both the retail and influencer economies.
Data shows average Joe traders' net inflows into popular stocks and funds remain high compared to pre-pandemic levels. This is despite the boom-and-bust cycle of day trading and meme stocks that has captured America's interest during the Covid pandemic.
At the same time, the pandemic lockdowns sparked a surge in interest in people with large followings on online platforms. This has strengthened the sub-economy of digital creators, which Goldman Sachs estimates has the potential to grow to $480 billion in revenue by 2027. Goldman reported in 2023 that around 50 million people work as content creators worldwide.
According to Wang, Dub's app has been downloaded more than 700,000 times. The company expects to reach 1 million before the end of the first quarter.
Looking forward, Wang said he hopes top retailers will gain followers and wealth through the Creator Program and Dub platform. One of Dub's advantages, he said, is the ability to see verified returns of each portfolio, which can be copied before a user decides to invest their own money behind it.
“I want the next five Warren Buffetts on Dub to be known and famous,” he said. “If we are truly successful with the Top Creator program, Dub will produce the next generation of the best fund managers and the best traders in the world that people will follow.”