Finsights Analyst Amin Abdelwahab reviews Upside, a new investment application that is becoming increasingly popular with students
Investing is complex, but with confidence and conviction in your investing style, it can be simple. Upside Technologies has developed an application focusing on ensuring their users make investment decisions which are informed, confident and intentional.
As partners of Leeds University Trading and Investment Society (LUUTIS), Upside have hosted a number of events, both online and in-person. In these events, I have had the opportunity to discuss the platform with members of the team, and it is clear that they are building a framework to revolutionise the world of investing by providing retail investors with the tools to invest successfully.
Investing can be simple, and the team at Upside provides the knowledge within its investing platform and application. To educate retail investors further, Upside has released “Academy Shorts'' - a series of short videos covering relevant investing concepts. Given the founders rich history within both the sell side and buy side, their YouTube series “Investing Corner” covers hot investing topics and market roundups.
Upside has provided the tools used by institutional investors, to ensure your investment journey is not just gambling, guesswork and wishful thinking. With a host of data made available to users, they are able to see: ESG ratings, price movements, technical indicators, historical earnings, relevant news articles, analyst recommendations, and hedge fund positions. To personalise the experience, Upside only provides insights and analysis on the stocks you have added to your watchlist, thereby providing bespoke analysis in your feed. All this information may be overwhelming, however, the organised feed interface (first image on the left) gives you the option to filter the insights of your choice for efficient viewing.
These tools will hopefully inspire you to create your own investment ideas, which you can publish on the platform with details about the ideas rationale ranging from technical indicators, fundamental analysis, macro/world events, and more. By detailing your price direction & target, time frame and conviction, the Upside community will understand your rationale behind the idea and other users may decide to track or perhaps comment on the idea to start a discussion, enabling users to learn from each other. The performance of your ideas will be met with appropriate scores and feedback based on proprietary formulas which have been utilised successfully in a hedge fund environment. The feedback loop helps to improve your next investment idea and thereby building confidence and improving investing habits. Soon a marketplace will also be launched which will allow users to sell their ideas and portfolios. The reward is aligned with the accuracy of the ideas and portfolios.
Building upon these ideas, Upside have released a portfolio builder, which will allow users to apply their risk appetite and investing style to structure a bespoke portfolio. Following a simple three-step journey, the app runs historical simulations to construct optimal combinations around your investment ideas. You will also be able to amend your risk level through a risk slider, alongside an overview of the historical performance and an ESG rating.
As an active user of the application, Upside provides exclusive insights and tools to enhance my investment skills and a safety net by implementing the “No idea, No trade” rule, meaning blind investment decisions cannot be executed. Therefore, I would be very comfortable trading real money using Upside compared to other investing platforms like eToro or Trading 212.
I highly encourage every student to download and try the app (linked below) to see for themselves how Upside provides the tools and insights to level the playing field between professional and retail investors. The team at Upside are actively looking to improve their application by listening to their users. Therefore if you would like to request features, report bugs or get in contact with the team, feel free to do so through the menu tab in the application. Also, their product roadmap details upcoming plans and updates, many of which are inspired by feedback from users.