This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 24, 2025 - March 30, 2025

The Malaysian stock market has a visibility problem. Retail investors, often swayed by hot tips and market chatter, lack the deep-dive analytics and financial firepower of institutional traders. This has resulted in a decades-long trend of low retail participation — just 22% in 2024, barely budging from previous years, according to Bursa Malaysia data.

In contrast, some markets have seen retail investors play a far bigger role. In Thailand, for example, retail investors have a significant presence in the stock market. Retail participation for cash equities was at 47% in 2021, according to McKinsey & Co’s Improving Thailand’s Capital Market Competitiveness and Efficiency report.

In Malaysia, however, many remain on the sidelines, lacking the tools and confidence to make informed decisions.

Warren Mak noticed this gap and set out to fill it. As CEO and co-founder of Ted Optimus Sdn Bhd, he believes the solution lies in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven stock reports and financial education. While institutional investors have access to sophisticated data and analytics, retail investors are often left to navigate the market using little more than speculation.

Ted Optimus offers real-time stock analysis, AI-driven trend forecasting and data-backed insights — tools typically reserved for fund managers and financial institutions. By making these resources accessible, the start-up hopes to help retail investors move beyond speculation and make informed, strategic decisions in the market.

Ted Optimus uses a two-pronged approach through Trade Wizard and Ted Academy. Trade Wizard leverages AI automation to analyse Bursa-listed stocks in real time, providing investors with institutional-grade market intelligence. At the same time, Ted Academy offers programmes designed to equip investors with the requisite knowledge to navigate financial markets independently.

Founded in 2020, Ted Optimus initially focused on Ted Academy before launching the Trade Wizard tool in 2023. It is the first Bursa-licensed local information vendor with AI-driven stock analytic capabilities. The company is authorised by the exchange to distribute live stock market data and subscribes to Bursa’s real-time data feed, says Mak.

“Locally, not many stock screeners actually subscribe to the live [data] because it’s too costly [as it is] almost RM25,000 to RM30,000 per month,” he explains.

Mak says that this two-pronged approach of AI-driven trading insights alongside financial education courses is necessary. This is because AI alone is insufficient for investors as they would require knowledge to interpret data.

“We want to empower them to make their own decisions after they attend our education [programmes]. And with education, we provide the tool,” he says.

With 15 years of experience at Bursa, Mak isn’t just familiar with the stock market — he has seen it inside out. Over the years, he helmed five different departments, including risk management and equity surveillance, where he gained first-hand insight into market behaviour.

Recognising the need for greater financial literacy, he spearheaded the creation of Bursa’s Investor Education Department and launched the Bursa Young Investors Club in Malaysian universities, aiming to cultivate a new generation of informed investors.

Mak’s ultimate goal is to empower investors. Education must come first, followed by technology-assisted decision-making, which in due course leads to long-term financial independence, he says.

Beyond providing tools, he hopes to shift mindsets: to create real demand for financial education and make investing a necessity rather than an afterthought. With rising inflation and the challenges of retirement planning, he believes financial literacy is essential.

Ted Academy offers courses that focus on equity markets as well as derivatives trading. In-person courses range from RM4,998 to RM6,998. There is also the option of pre-recorded courses. These courses are one-time investments with lifetime access, says Mak.

Embedded into the Trade Wizard tool is a stock scanner that can detect bullish patterns in the stock market, providing investors with stock screening and scanning, data-driven insights and automated signals. This helps users make informed, evidence-based decisions on their investments.

The tool offers 10 different scanners that are tailored to various trading purposes, such as intraday trades, swing trades and structured warrant trading. Investors can customise columns to display preferred metrics and add rankings to prioritise stocks.

“Trade Wizard is a software into which we integrate AI and automation. With Trade Wizard, we can provide sustainable data-driven analytics to the user,” says Yuan Ting Jing, chief operating officer and co-founder of Ted Optimus.

The AI system for the tool was built in-house, ensuring full control over automation, analytics and visualisation. Trade Wizard costs RM998 for the semi-pro version and RM2,498 for the AI elite version.

The platform is designed with a three-step approach: stock selection, stock ranking, and stock entry and exit. Yuan says that the stock selection and ranking process is automated using AI, which integrates real-time Bursa data to categorise stocks based on their performance over time.

Additionally, the algorithm detects trends based on collective market participation, notes Mak. What this means is that Trade Wizard classifies stocks into 40 different themes and ranks them based on real market movements. The system ranks these themes from one to 40, identifying stocks where institutional funds and significant capital inflows drive price movements. If a theme appears in the top three, it indicates strong market participation and potential for returns, offering a more reliable investment indicator than unverified stock tips.

“We’ve also developed methods to gauge broader market sentiment. During bullish phases, the win rate and accuracy of the scanner improve significantly, and we advise traders to stay active in favourable conditions while exercising caution in bearish markets. Of course, it’s important to note that past performance does not guarantee future results, and we encourage users to review our disclaimers before making any trading decisions,” says Mak.

The platform also prioritises stocks for short-, medium- and long-term strategies from the over 1,000 stocks that Bursa has, adds Yuan. He says the ranking system filters stocks based on real-time data, which allows investors to look at more promising stocks.

Investors can also visualise market sentiment, leverage proprietary insights and make strategic decisions based on clear data-driven signals with the Trade Wizard charting tool, which incorporates proprietary indicators, colour-coded signals and numbered metrics.

To add to this, Trade Wizard’s “fundamental” section provides investors with a detailed view of a company’s financial health. The section combines performance charts, financial statements and key metrics in one place, which allows investors to assess a company’s long-term viability and profitability.

“Ted Optimus is built around real-time market data, enabling users to detect volatility and sudden price movements as they happen, [which are] particularly vital for intraday trading. We incorporate these rapid shifts into our risk assessments using technical indicators like percentage drop from peak and Average True Range (ATR), among other factors. If a stock breaches a predefined threshold, users receive automatic alerts and can decide whether to hold or exit based on our strategy rules,” Yuan explains.

“Beyond technical signals, our AI bot also tracks relevant news for each user’s watch list and sends updates via Telegram. By pairing real-time data analysis with timely news alerts, we help traders react promptly to shifting market conditions and make more informed decisions in periods of heightened volatility.”

To help users make informed decisions, Ted Optimus actively teaches key risk management techniques, which include stop-loss strategies, appropriate position sizing, and balancing risk-reward ratios, says Yuan.

“At a portfolio level, we advocate proper allocation and diversification to minimise exposure to any single stock or sector. We also advise our students to avoid thinly traded and downtrending stocks, [which is] a straightforward strategy that helps steer clear of higher-risk, lower win-rate opportunities in short-term trading. Our goal is to ensure that traders not only spot promising opportunities, but also have the tools and knowledge to protect their capital amid the inherent uncertainties of the market,” he says.

“We’re in the process of rolling out a dedicated ‘risk factor’ metric that uses technical indicators such as volatility and price patterns to anticipate potential stock downturns. Each stock in our list is assigned a risk score, and we also offer a user-focused risk tolerance assessment so traders can pinpoint whether they lean [towards] conservative or aggressive.”

All in all, Trade Wizard provides users with a complete trading workflow, proprietary algorithms and a live ranking system for stocks. Users can also input trading conditions and perform backtesting to assess how their strategies would have performed in historical market conditions, says Mak.

Currently, users cannot execute trades within the platform. In the near future, Mak hopes to integrate Trade Wizard with brokers via application programming interface (API) connections, which will allow users to buy and sell stocks.

In preparation for this, Ted Optimus is applying for a digital investment adviser licence from the Securities Commission Malaysia. This will allow the platform to provide direct recommendations and target price projections.

The company also plans to provide technical and analysis enhancements alongside its offerings. This is by leveraging financial statements and key ratios to identify, evaluate and execute investment decisions. Yuan says this systematic approach minimises emotional biases.

Additionally, Ted Optimus wants to integrate non-traditional data such as government open data, social media sentiment and satellite imagery to gain market insights. This would enable investors to assess company performance ahead of earnings releases, says Yuan.

“[We are also looking at] employing supervised learning algorithms using price feeds and technical indicators to identify recurring patterns and predict significant stock movements, enhancing stock selection and forecasting accuracy,” he adds.

The company also offers AI-generated reports for Bursa stocks that can be accessed through Trade Wizard. These reports simplify financial data by categorising quarterly performance into positive or negative trends, says Yuan.

The AI-powered report was developed through the Malaysia Digital Catalyst Grant (MDCG) from the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC). Ted Optimus holds MDEC status and was the Bursa InvestHack 2020 champion.

The RM294,229 MDEC MDCG grant was used for coding, fine-tuning and the production of the AI report, says Yuan. The company also received a Cradle Fund grant, which will be used for the commercialisation of Trade Wizard as a whole.

The AI report was built using real-time data feeds from Bursa, which include financial reports and share price movements, says Yuan. The development process of the report involved gathering raw market data from Bursa, creating AI models for financial and technical analysis, ensuring the reports are intuitive and easy to understand, and refining AI predictions based on historical performance and real-time market movements.

Yuan explains that the AI system follows a three-stage machine learning pipeline to ensure accuracy and reliability of the insights. This calls for clean and reputable financial data from Bursa, multiple machine learning models being tested and refined for optimal accuracy as well as ensuring AI-generated insights that investors can use to make decisions.

“In machine learning, there are three parts, [which are] the input, the model and the output. [For the] input, you need to give it clean and reputable data sources. Model-wise, we actually tested several machine learning models. [Thereafter], we are able to actually compare and select the model that best represents the final output that we want. All these are done through a regular process. [This] took some time. Our grant was for a one-year period. We took six to nine months to complete the entire prototype and then produce it,” he says.

The reports provide automated data interpretation, real-time insights and institutional-grade analytics at an affordable price. This helps investors make quick and informed decisions instead of spending hours or even days manually analysing data, says Yuan.

With this, complex financial reports are broken down into easy-to-understand insights for retail investors.

These reports are able to cover different analytical aspects of a stock, which include analysis of a company’s latest financial performance and qualitative assessments of a company such as insights into segment growth, market positioning and strategic outlook.

The AI provides technical chart analysis by interpreting share price trends and potential uptrend or downtrend possibilities while compiling recent news and summarising relevant information for each company.

The AI is able to cover the 1,000-plus stocks on Bursa and expand as more stocks get listed.

“By harnessing AI and advanced data analytics, we provide users with detailed reports that enhance decision-making. Our technology integrates natural language processing, machine learning algorithms and large language models (LLMs) to analyse extensive financial data. Through a user-friendly interface, investors can customise report lengths, receive personalised summaries and easily visualise data,” says Yuan.

Mak hopes to see a transition from speculative to informed investing among investors. This is because the reports allow investors to cross-check the tips they receive against real-time AI analysis and up-to-date market intelligence.

“This will eliminate the need and the urge for getting hot tips. [Investors] want something quick, but [hot tips] are not validated and may not be accurate. [With the AI-generated reports], they are empowered to make their own decisions. We want to change their behaviour from a speculator and gambler to a more stable and informed trader and investor,” says Mak.

Looking ahead, Ted Optimus’ goal is to broaden its data coverage by sourcing market information from Hong Kong and the US. This will provide access to international market indicators and trends, offering more diversified options for investors and attracting a wider client base.

The co-founders are exploring the development of a domain-specific LLM tailored exclusively for Bursa stocks. “Think of it as a ChatGPT-like tool, but one that’s deeply embedded with the nuances and specific data related to the Malaysian stock market,” Yuan explains.

They are also working on an analytics AI agent designed to complement the company’s existing analytics suite. This interactive tool will not only respond to user queries but also analyse market data in real time and generate actionable insights.

“Both initiatives are in the exploratory phase, and while we are excited about their potential, we are carefully assessing the feasibility and integration within our broader technology strategy,” he says.

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