Head of direct investing, James Leplaw, unveiled the new platform aimed at retail investors that will today compete with online retail products such as ANZ's Online Investment Account trading platform, which allows ANZ deposit holders to trade a bundle of ASX-200 shares.
Unlike the ANZ retail investor product, Macquarie's Edge platform costs nothing to access its basic features, including (otherwise freely available) market data and aggregated news collated by its technology partner, financial news aggregator service, Wotnews. Edge does not limit trading to a bundle.
Features offered on Edge include the ability to develop closed networks with other Edge members, real-time trading and SMS notifications triggered by price, company announcement or stock market information. SMS alerts cost AU$3.30 (US$2.75) per bundle of 10.
Leplaw said that fully fledged investors would get access to Macquarie's "plain speak" stock reports, derived from more complex reports to institutional investors, but translated by Macquarie Bank's in-house editors for consumption by retail investors. The reports cost AU$75 (US$62.50) per month or will be issued to traders conducting five or more transactions per month. Brokerage rates vary between AU$23.95 (US$19.95) and AU$28.95 (US$24.11) for regular investors.
Macquarie plans to integrate its older 2007-launched platform Macquarie Prime with Edge during the first half of 2010.
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