Ryan Knudson

One thing he realizes is that the company is essentially not focusing on the right customers.

And their chief brokerage officer was talking to me about it and compared it to an airline whose frequent flyers hate the airline the most.

It just didn't really make sense for the business.

So Vlad basically decides that he needs to start from square one and rebuild the company with these traders at its core.

He essentially offers them a better trading platform, more products, more ways to trade, and especially most recently in the past year, these access to newer markets that maybe competitors aren't offering yet.

Zero-date to expiration options, which are these ultra-risky, fast-expiring contracts that require perfect timing, and they come with huge risk but huge reward as well.

One trader that I talked to that primarily trades zero-date options told me, I can turn

$500 or $600 into $50,000 or $60,000 if I make the perfect trade.

Right, exactly.

But of course, the converse of that is that you have the potential for huge losses as well.

And because of the high risk involved, it requires this kind of perfect timing of the market.

And it does open.

It is one of the highest risk trades out there to engage in.

So these are platforms where traders can buy futures contracts tied to the outcome of events happening in the future.

Exactly, exactly.

So elections, like the Federal Reserve meeting, you can basically put money down on the outcome of these future events that they pay off if your prediction is accurate.

And the type of contract that has made quite a splash is sports.

So these prediction markets are available for sports games and entertainment events.

So not only can you bet on or hedge your portfolio against who's going to win the election, for example, but you can also bet on the winner of, you know, the Monday night football game.

Right, right.