TradeStation, a leading U.S. online brokerage company and trading platform developer, picked Shinhan Investment as an exclusive partner to enter the Korean market and expand further into Asia.

Shinhan Investment on Thursday held a seminar at Conrad Seoul, celebrating the launch of TradeStation 9.5, the upgraded version of the TradeStation Group’s flagship online trading system.

This is the first time the system will be officially operated outside the U.S. market despite its popularity among Asian traders.

“Given the size and activeness of the Korean trading market, we judged that Korea is a desirable spot to attempt the first local integration for TS 9.5,” said Salomon Sredni, CEO and chairman of TradeStation Group.

“The reason that we picked Shinhan, among many other candidates, was because of the excellence of its customer service, as well as its agile risk management capacity.”

TradeStation is currently the world’s most widely used trading system, allowing users direct access to a variety of asset classes.

It has an average of 42.98 profitable transactions per month, which is considerably higher than the 1.08 of top U.S. brokerage house Charles Schwab, according to TradeStation officials.

“The (TradeStation) service will not only secure a channel of fixed income but also create new sources, by activating the trading market in general and boosting the level of investors’ insight,” said an official of Shinhan Investment.

TradeStation originally kicked off as an IT research company in 1982 but, after developing its signature system, became a brokerage company in 2000.

“Our customers wanted a one-stop route to analyze the market and then to execute the resulting strategies right away,” Sredni said.

To serve this purpose, the company has for years operated TradeStation 2000i, the former version of TradeStation 9.5.

“The upgraded TS 9.5 offers a faster data processing speed, as well as a user-friendly programming language called EasyLanguage,” the chairman said.

Because it is relatively easy to use, TS 9.5 will help individual traders navigate through stocks with ease and thus view the market from a broader perspective, possibly grasping the chance to grow into more professional traders, he added.

In order to help novice traders here, Shinhan Investment has organized a special task force to provide professional customer consulting services, according to officials.

“We are also working on an education program, to discover capable traders and to promote them to global commodity trading advisers in the long term,” said Kang Dae-seok, CEO of Shinhan Investment.

TradeStation’s official launch in Korea will also lead to the U.S. company’s expansion in the Asian market in upcoming years.

“We expect to launch the system in Japan, hopefully early next year, and similar discussions are also ongoing in China,” Sredni said.

“But the greatest challenge is to pick the ideal partner, as the key concept of our business is to integrate with the local market.”

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)