Ask HN: I want to build a share dealing company. How could I start?
Through what routes could I begin to trade on the behalf of others? How could I avoid long Know Your Customer practices? What are other barriers might exist, particularly in the UK?
Through what routes could I begin to trade on the behalf of others? How could I avoid long Know Your Customer practices? What are other barriers might exist, particularly in the UK?
Depending on your definition of small you might also need to figure out ways to reduce transactions fees which may mean taking on risk yourself, in which case you'll need to ensure you have suitable risk expertise on your team.
One way to make things easier might be to whitelabel an existing brokerage service as a step up to being a full broker.
I'd expect the fees to trade directly on the LSE or other markets to be prohibitive, but is there potential to trade through another execution-only stockbroker? From Quora answer re. financial trading APIs in the UK (http://www.quora.com/What-APIs-are-available-for-automated-f...) deposits of the ones mentioned appear to be on the order of £10k+ and if it'd be legal to perform trades on other's behalves.