Dub, a trading platform, will compensate retail investors for showcasing their portfolios on a TikTok-style "creator program."

• Dub's trading platform will enable retail investors to earn royalties by replicating their portfolios.
• It's part of a new creator program launched by the investing app.

A new service from Dub, a platform for retail traders, allows everyday investors to share their portfolios and earn money, debuted on Thursday.

Dub's top creator program will pay retail traders royalties for users to access their model portfolio, marking the latest effort to attract mom-and-pop investors to its platform, which promotes portfolio duplication rather than traditional stock picking.

""We are fundamentally rethinking the distribution of capital to investing talent, and we are at the very early stages of another retail investing revolution," said Steven Wang, Dub's founder and CEO."

Dub, launched a year ago, allows users to track and replicate the investment portfolios of notable figures such as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Users can do this by paying $9.99 per month or $89.99 per year and using their own money held in Dub's broker dealer to create copies of these portfolios.

Wang stated that these portfolios are monitored for modifications and any trades are automatically synchronized to those who copied them, allowing traders to operate on "auto pilot" and avoid human mistakes in missing any trades.

Now, the creator program offers a financial reward for users who make their portfolios available for copying, provided they meet a personal investment minimum of $1,000.

The program's fee structure resembles influencer compensation on social media platforms such as TikTok. Traders who are accepted receive a fee that takes into account various social metrics, with the rate not solely based on the number of portfolio copies per creator, but that figure may play a role.

Each creator in the program determines the amount of royalties they receive individually, according to Wang.

At the time of launch, Dub stated that multiple traders were already enrolled in the program. The roster includes Andrew Ver Planck, a graduate of MacKay Shields and Putnam Investments, and Lawrence Fuller, a SeekingAlpha analyst.

Though some portfolios require larger investments to make a copy, Dub has a minimum deposit of $100. The company's broker dealer is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The 'next generation' of investing influencers

The influencer economy and retail trading are experiencing growth, and Dub's program emerges during this prosperous time.

Despite the boom-and-bust cycle of day trading and meme stocks that captured America's interest during the Covid pandemic, data shows that net inflows from average Joe traders to popular stocks and funds remain elevated compared with pre-pandemic levels.

The pandemic lockdowns have boosted the sub-economy linked to digital creators, with Goldman Sachs estimating it to be a $480 billion revenue opportunity by 2027. According to Goldman's report in 2023, approximately 50 million people worldwide work as content creators.

According to Wang, Dub's app has been downloaded more than 700,000 times and the company anticipates reaching 1 million downloads before the end of the first quarter.

Wang stated that he anticipates the best individual traders achieving fame and wealth through Dub's platform and the creator program. One of Dub's advantages, he added, is the ability to view verified returns of each portfolio before a user decides to invest their own money.

"The next five Warren Buffetts should be discovered and renowned on Dub," he stated. "If our top creator program is successful, the next generation of the world's top fund managers and traders will emerge from Dub."