Markets Media published the announcement on Tuesday morning, and it reads like the company's own text because it is the company's own text, word for word, down to the capital A in "Acquisition". Plus500 says it has "conditionally agreed to acquire Hedge Capital Markets Inc., together with its subsidiaries". One of them is an SEC-registered broker-dealer . Disruption Banking ran the same release two minutes later.
The release calls this "Plus500’s entry into the SEC-regulated segment of the US market". I had to read that twice. Until now the group's American business has lived entirely under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, clearing and executing futures and prediction markets for retail and institutional clients. Stocks were outside its licence.
The release says almost nothing about the target. Hedge was founded in 2021. It offers stocks and ETFs. I went looking for the rest on Hedge's own website, and the home page pitches a social product with one line: "Make a hedge fund with your family & friends". Members invite relatives, vote together on what to buy and hold the shares in separate accounts.
The legal plumbing sits in the footer. The broker-dealer is called Hedge Pro LLC. The disclosures say "Hedge Pro LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of HedgeCapital Markets Inc.", missing space and all. Trades are not cleared in-house either, because in the site's words "Clearing, custody, and execution services are offered through Apex Clearing Corporation".
So Plus500 is buying a licensed introducing broker . It is not buying a clearing firm. I found no customer count, no revenue figure and no assets number for Hedge anywhere I looked. My guess is that the licence and the staff matter more than the app, and the release nearly says so when it mentions "the highly skilled Hedge personnel joining the Group".
The price is missing. The release says the deal "will be funded entirely from the Group’s existing cash resources, which stood at over $860m as of 30 June 2026". That tells me the cheque is small next to the pile. It does not tell me the cheque.
The 2021 deal is the obvious yardstick, and Plus500 points to it itself. Back then it bought Cunningham Commodities, a futures commission merchant founded in 1982, together with the trading platform CTS, and its April 2021 Business Wire release says "The Acquisition consideration of approximately US$30m will be funded from Plus500’s existing cash balances". Cunningham had gross revenue of about US$19m in 2020. Its pre-tax profit was about US$0.6m.
Cunningham had exchange memberships. Hedge is five years old. I suspect Hedge cost less than Cunningham did, though I cannot check it.
Closing depends on "the expiration of the required notice period and approval by FINRA under Rule 1017". I read the rule. A member must apply for approval of a change in ownership or control "at least 30 days prior to such change", and the text lets a firm close before FINRA finishes, with the risk that FINRA then imposes interim restrictions on the business.
There is no closing date in the release. There is a product date. Plus500 promises a US "super-app" in Q1 2027 that puts futures, prediction markets, stocks, options and ETFs in one account, run from a new New York office alongside the existing Chicago team. The executive quoted says the deal brings "for the first time, direct access to the US securities market". The copies I opened did not print the speaker's name.
Who clears the stock trades after closing? It could stay Apex. It could become a Plus500 entity later. How many Hedge customers come across, and what did a listed company with $860m of cash pay without printing the number?
The pattern is plain. Plus500 bought a US futures licence for about $30m in 2021 and built a business on top of it, and now it wants the securities licence next door. I do not know if the app will ship on time. I still cannot tell what Hedge itself was worth.