Retail investors are flocking to Discord amid the Reddit day-trader revolution

• WallStreetBets captured the market's attention for weeks as Reddit traders squared off with hedge funds, but retail investors are increasingly gathering on another platform.
• Discord has become a highly active hub for retail traders to discuss trading strategies, investing tips, and options alerts.
• Insider spoke with one user who said he has reaped an 850% return since August after learning from other uses, while another runs a VIP trading chat where members can pay for exclusive alerts.
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While Reddit's WallStreetBets forum dominated market headlines in January as day traders challenged Wall Street short sellers to pump the price of GameStop stock, an emerging class of investors are increasingly finding their way to Discord.

The mobile and desktop platform hosts over 4,000 servers tagged "trading" and over 700 tagged "stocks," according to data site Disboard.

On any given trading day, hundreds of exchanges are sent through Discord channels as investors discuss options they're buying, breaking news developments, and positions they're taking.

"Take profits on SNDL or no??" one user posted in the server Viper Trading earlier in January. "Cannabis is the future," one member responded. Four minutes later, another replied "Hold $3.50."

One active Discord user, Martin Escobedo, tells Insider that he is up over 850% since August using trading techniques he's learned from Ace Enterprises, a Discord server that's gained over 75,000 members in just six months.

Read more: Inside Eagle Investors, the 20,000-member online community run by 2 Indiana University students that's helping spearhead the Gen Z day-trading revolution

The server is led by a team of 30 traders who discuss their daily activities during market hours in a public chat all members can view. After the close, any member can discuss the trades they made that day.

"At the beginning I was clueless. I had no idea what these guys were talking about," Escobedo told Insider.

When he joined Discord in August, he would spend every afternoon after his day-job as a benefit specialist at a hospital devouring the various channels within Ace Enterprises. In the #education channel, investors discuss everything from basic trading definitions to advanced options techniques. Escobedo also watches Ace Enterprises founder Danny Devon discuss trading strategies on his Tik Tok live.

On Friday, Escobedo was unsure about a Teladoc trade and messaged one of the traders in a private DM for his insight on the chart. "295 for TDOC (teladoc) will be your PT?" "Entry," the user responded.

Ace Enterprises founder Danny Devan told Insider he's on a journey to "teach people how to fish," and encourages members to only trade once in a while and learn the benefits of long-term investing.

"There are so many other Discords that focus on alerts and telling you when to get in and when to get out," Devan said.

He explains to his members that day trading is not consistently profitable over a long period of time.

"We're not going to sit here and try to convince you you're going to be rich day trading."

Though in the profits-and-losses tab of the Ace Enterprises and in many other discord channels, there's an overwhelming sense that people have joined Discord with a goal in mind: to eventually reap huge gains from their efforts.

Read more: Barclays says buy these 33 beaten-down stocks that are perfectly poised to capitalize on the reopening of the economy in the years ahead

One Ace Enterprises member posted: "I'm poor so I kinda don't want to post this but up ~5 today on my positions. Thanks especially to @dougiedee" (one of the traders).

"Small gains add up bro! That's $28 bucks that you didn't have before," said @dougiedee. "You're not poor, you're just on a journey to be rich :)," replied Ace Ventures owner, Danny Devan.

Other discord servers have private channels for paying-members only, like Asset Entities, one of the largest trading discord servers with over 115,000 users.

On a typical trading day over 15,000 users can be online at once. Roughly 4,000 users pay $25 a month to become "VIPs" and receive extensive trading alerts throughout the day covering SPACs, day-trades, penny stocks, long-term trades, options, and more.

Though Asset Entities co-founder Jackson Fairbanks is pulling in revenue from the VIP subscription, he told Insider he values the community he's built from the discord server more than anything else.

Whereas one person may not be able to spot a trend, a team of individuals can, Fairbanks said.