Modern trading apps span multiple asset classes. Credit: Alesia Kozik via Pexels.

Key Takeaways

Modern trading apps increasingly combine multiple asset classes under a single roof.

Robinhood and eToro pioneered the first multi-asset retail venues in the 2010s.

Today, platforms continue to diversify their offerings.

In 2013, eToro made a revolutionary decision to list Bitcoin on its trading platform, which had previously been exclusively focused on foreign exchange (FX) and contract for difference (CFD) markets.

Twelve years later, eToro and its peers have transformed the way retail investors access different asset classes.

In the age of the trading super app, platforms are pursuing an increasingly seamless user experience and continue to expand their offerings with new products, such as tokenized equities and prediction markets.

In 1990, retail investors typically placed orders over the telephone, and it took days for transactions to settle.

Back then, trading was reserved for professionals. Early electronic order systems were out of reach for the average Joe, as were most derivatives.

As internet access grew, however, brokers like Ameritrade and Schwab started offering their services online.

Meanwhile, digital upstarts like OANDA, the first company to bring FX trading to the mass market, inaugurated a new era of retail participation in previously gated financial activity.

In 2007, Israeli brothers Yoni and Ronen Assia founded RetailFX with a simple vision—to empower retail investors with sophisticated trading strategies.

The platform was initially focused on spot FX markets.

But starting with the introduction of currency CFDs, RetailFX, rebranded as eToro in 2010, expanded its offering to include CFDs on various securities and commodities, then later spot stocks and crypto.

The next major innovation came in 2013, when Robinhood hit the market with a mobile trading app that listed U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Robinhood’s mobile-first interface captured the early smartphone boom, transforming the retail trading experience from a desk-based activity to an always-on moneymaker that users found addictive.

While eToro and other platforms launched mobile apps before 2013, Robinhood pioneered the features and design principles that have come to define the product: intuitive orders, frictionless funding, and clean, simple graphics.

With these fundamentals in place, it was easy for Robinhood to branch out into new asset classes without sacrificing the order flow and uncluttered interface that made it popular in the first place.

Since 2013, the app has introduced support for cryptocurrencies, options and futures, fractional shares, and, most recently, prediction markets and stock tokens.