By Riley Kaminer
Soon after Angelo Ciaramello graduated from college, he realized that the ‘real world’ wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
On paper, his life was a success. He had a stable job working in IT for a pharmaceutical company and had quickly secured a promotion. But it just didn’t feel right – the long hours, the burnout.
Ciaramello much more enjoyed living in the digital world. When a friend told him about forex trading, he quickly became obsessed. “I got reeled in,” he told Refresh Miami. “I wanted to make it big – become a millionaire – trading in the markets.”
Eventually, Ciaramello realized that there was an opportunity for him to educate people like him on how to trade. So he started to build a trading community and series of courses to help others find success in the financial world. Soon after launching his educational brand, The Forex League, 30,000 novice traders joined their Telegram group.
In December 2020, Ciaramello decided to double down on these digital hustles and quit his day job. The following February, he moved from New Jersey to Fort Lauderdale in an effort to improve his quality of life. “I wanted to move where people are happier,” he explained.
Since then, it’s not just Ciaramello’s personal life that has improved. He reports that the move has transformed his business initiatives as well.
In April 2021, Ciaramello came up with the idea for what would eventually become The Funded Trader. The sea of new, Reddit-empowered traders were missing one thing: dry powder. These diamond-handed financiers needed capital to level up their trading game.
Ciaramello saw a business here. The Funded Trader allows would-be traders to prove their skills through simulated trading tests. If they pass, The Funded Trader will then provide the trader with up to $400,000. Traders can keep up to 80% of their profits.
“If you can prove your skills, then you can trade our capital,” asserted Ciaramello. Only around four to seven percent of those who take on the challenge are successful in their quest to become a trader.
But for the roughly 2,000 people who have made it through, the upside is significant. Ciaramello reported that the average monthly income for these traders is upwards of $6,000. This is a life-changing payday for many traders on the platform who left jobs in trucking, fast food, and law enforcement to join The Funded Trader.
The company expects to collect $30 million in revenue by the end of 2022, at a monthly growth rate of 20%. It now has 40 full-time employees globally. While Ciaramello is currently the only South Florida-based employee, he expressed a strong desire to hire more local talent and make our region the hub for The Funded Trader.
Looking forward, Ciaramello aspires for The Funded Trader to be on par with platforms like Robinhood that have fundamentally changed how millions of Americans interact with financial markets. “We’re now focusing on developing our technology and user experience to make sure that our product is delivered in such a way that people want to keep using it,” said Ciaramello.
“I really believe that there’s no reason why our company can’t become one of the largest companies not only in South Florida, but realistically in the United States.”
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- Jake Paul’s micro-betting app Betr raises $50M Series A
- Daba is opening up the African startup ecosystem to investors in Miami and beyond
- Mytaverse brings businesses into the metaverse by building immersive digital environments
- OneOf’s $8M funding round will bring more musicians, athletes and brands to NFT marketplace
- This Broward high school grad built an app to expose inequities in STEM
- Superlogic lands $7.6M strategic round to pioneer the future of loyalty points - April 19, 2024
- AI, climatetech and healthtech reign supreme on Day 1 of eMerge Americas’ 10th anniversary - April 18, 2024
- Brought together by tech, kept together by culture: Miami’s protagonistic role in LatAm’s startup story - April 15, 2024