seems that's worth a repost
Valuable and important information to read from Paul Strickland.
I do read the boards from time-to-time, if only to help me gauge general investor concerns and the temperature of the water, so to speak. I like to pay attention to our shareholders, after all, I work for them.
I read some of the posts today and I became concerned that there are some general misconceptions regarding our industry, SpoozToolz and our marketing plan. I am write this to you because I have read some of the stuff you have posted on the boards. I find you insightful and in possession of significant business acumen. I respect the way in which you handle yourself in the face of adversity and the manner in which you have defused certain situations with tact and kindness. So this is a communication for you to share with others. I will try to explain why there is significant interest in SpoozToolz by large, online Brokers knowing that you already understand.
Firstly, SpoozToolz supports multiple asset classes. In other words, you can trade stocks, options, cash bonds, mutual funds, futures, Forex, ETFs, etc., all with ease. This means that any Brokerage firm executing any of the aforementioned asset classes fall into our target market because Brokers are the Spooz customers. (We can talk about the exchanges, who are at the top of the food chain, later.) Knowing the industry as I do, I can suggest there is another aspect of large Brokers that tends to be true; most Brokers develop technology with the same relative efficiency as governments manage real estate. Brokers tend to acquire technology, not develop technology.
Online Brokers have a singular goal in life … transaction revenues. Of course large Brokers have multiple revenue streams, they are like banks, but technology to them is simply a means to an end. They will employ any technology that will help them; 1) open new customer accounts, 2) increase the average transactions of their existing accounts.
Someone made the point in a post today that a certain large Broker would not change out, or modify their execution infrastructure due to SpoozToolz. This is absolutely correct, but is hardly required and, therefore, irrelevant. SpoozToolz sits on top of their existing execution platform, be it web based or no … it matters not. We simply write to the Broker’s execution Application Program Interface (API) and trade directly through their existing infrastructure including connectivity to any exchange upon which they offer execution. In addition, we also write to the price feed API and receive quotes and news for display in a spreadsheet. This means that Spooz is not responsible for exchange fees for acquisition of real-time data. That would be the responsibility of the Brokers.
The real question is: How does one launch a global marketing effort without spending $50 million for marketing to ensure its success? The answer is by using a technique termed “channel marketing”, or, forming relationships with Broker partners who will serve Spooz as distribution channels directly to their customers. What’s more, if the trading technology has market appeal, they will fund a large part of the marketing budget.
Why would SpoozToolz appeal to a large online, electronic customer base? There are many reasons, here are ten good ones:
1. SpoozToolz Functionality – How can I build a simple screen that will allow me to sell 30 Dow stocks in their correct, price weighted proportions, and simultaneously buy the futures contract. How can I build a screen that will allow me to execute simple treasury swaps? How can I automatically adjust the quantity of stock to be executed downward due to an increase in volatility? How can I simply and easily program a Trade Execution Button (TEB) to place a limit order to buy an asset on the bid without ever entering a price? There is no platform out there that can accomplish this.
2. Extenability – SpoozToolz is not an execution platform built in Excel, rather, it extends the functionality of Excel. How far can this be extended? Competitors that have come before us, prior to the electronic trading age, built their core products upon trade decision support platforms offering quotes, charts, technical indicators, etc. These platforms now have third party developers writing plug-in execution platforms for use with their core products. In today’s world this is backward thinking, after-all, most execution platforms look, work and feel much the same. So how many execution platforms does one need? I know of one first tear data vendor that supports 11 of these third party plug-in platforms. Why??? Spooz has approached the problem from a different perspective. Spooz has designed the most flexible and customizable execution platform in the world. Version 2 will incorporate an open API so that any third party developer can easily write trading applications to SpoozToolz. Imagine, instead of supporting 11 execution platforms, Spooz will support dozens of new trading applications, such as a market depth module, an extended options module, a Level II module, or a price distribution charting module all developed by third parties. Spooz will maintail rigorous QC standards and market these applications as plug-ins. We already have an area on our website to facilitate third party developers and we currently have relationships with several. It is our intent to launch 2 or 3 unique trading applications about the same time we roll out SpoozToolz Version
There is no competitor out there that is pursuing this.
3. Flexibility – with SpoozToolz one could solve almost any business problem in very short order, and without a programmer. One example might be for an airline to hedge jet fuel ten years in advance, or for an import/exporter to eliminate cross rate currency risk, or for a family man with a mutual fund portfolio to track and manage his investments. There is no single platform out there that can accomplish this.
4. Customizability – There is a reason we have not published lots of templates as of this time. Our competition does not yet see what we see, so why tip our hand? It will be possible in the future, however, for a SpoozToolz customer, no matter where his Brokerage account resides, to go online and retrieve a template that seems to sill his needs. These templates are .xls files, and I believe that most traders will modify templates (by altering formulae or inserting their proprietary algorithms) to customize them. There is no platform out there that can accomplish this.
5. Compatibility – You can download anything into Excel, form inventory systems to foreign bank account information, automatically and with ease. There is no platform out there that can accomplish this.
6. Versatility – Execute multiple asset classes, for multiple accounts, at multiple Brokers from the same screen at the same time. There is nothing out there that can accomplish this.
7. Unparalleled Analysis Capabilities – I found one comment I read on the boards mildly amusing today. I believe the writer was amused by the words “market data analysis.” I interpret this to mean that the writer trades without analyzing data. This means he/she can not be using technical indicators, looking at any measure of volatility, probability, or for that matter, risk management. But what if he/she could? What if he/she had a tool that would allow them to instantly download into a spreadsheet ten years of price and volume history on any stock, bond, futures contract (our database for the grains goes back to 1963), etc.
8. Wireless Trading – How many hand-held devices currently support Excel? How many will support Excel in 5, no 2 years. This means that a Brokers customer can trade, with the click of a button they defined on a screen they developed, at anytime from anywhere in the world. Who can do this?
9. Regional Portability – Do you want to expand marketing efforts to India, Mr. Broker? Develop 10-20 regionally oriented Excel templates for use in a particular market, any market, and you are already there. Anyone have any idea where I might find this technology?
10. Support – Since SpoozToolz extends the functionality of Excel to facilitate trading and related analysis, reporting, and management. And since Microsoft does a good job of supporting Excel, can we not claim that to a certain degree, isn’t Microsoft supporting SpoozToolz. Weak argument you say? I wasn’t necessarily referring to technical support, I was talking about growth. More importantly, we will provide technical support to our partner Brokers customers so that the Broker doesn’t have to. Okay, there is competition that does well supporting their own solutions.
For these reasons and more, SpoozToolz is a disruptive technology. Further, it will be offered at disruptive price points. I defy anyone to touch the capabilities of SpoozToolz for less than $400 per month, or $1,000 per month for that matter. It simply does not exist anywhere on the planet. So why am I writing this letter knowing, no asking, that it be posted for our shareholders to consider? Because an interesting conversation ensued while I was in San Diego last week due to a remark made in a stock report on SPZI. It was the contention of the writer that if some large Broker was developing a similar product, that is a spreadsheet-based product, that they would launch it and burry Spooz. I believe this to be such an errant assumption that I would encourage a large Broker to do just that. If this occurred, do you believe this incredibly insightful Broker, already having deep pockets as a result of transaction revenue, would supply this technology to his competitor Brokers? If not, where ever could they find it?
I know someone who knows someone!
Best Regards,
Paul D. Strickland, Jr., CEO
AI
