Admit it, we all felt a tinge of jealousy watching Leo diCaprio live the life of excess and greed in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street. Sure he was completely crazy and riddled with any number of addictions, but who doesn’t want to fly a helicopter and own a boat?

Now there’s an app called Robinhood, which is set for launch in Australia, that aims to give smartphone users the chance to flip stocks as easily as posting a picture to Instagram. This from Mashable:

Founded by American math whizzes Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, the platform — which aims to take the middle man out of stock trading — will use Australia as its first destination for international expansion outside the U.S. The company said in a statement it is beginning the process of obtaining regulatory approval locally.

The financial benefit of taking out the middle man can be as much as between $20 and $65 (Australian) per trade, which has encouraged those who don’t normally dabble to dip their toes in stock-trading.

The app has been functional in the US since last April, and despite fears that it may encourage the uninitiated to be reckless with their money, most traders only engage in four or five trades per month.

That’s Snoop Dogg with a shout out to the app, as well as a thinly-veiled reference to his love for the ‘erb.

There are still quite a few regulatory hoops for the app to jump through before trading can commence Down Under, but if all goes according to plan it shouldn’t be long until life gives them lemons…

[source:mashable]