China's leading online brokerage firm, Up Fintech Holding Limited, just debuted on the NASDAQ Stock Market this week. Company executives flew to New York City to ring the opening bell to celebrate the firm's initial public offering (IPO). Trading under the ticker symbol "TIGR," which is a play on the company's domestic moniker "Tiger Brokers," prices for the firm's 13 million American depository shares (ADSs) was offered at US$8 per share.

Each share represents 15 Class A ordinary shares, which started trading at US$8.10 at the start of the trading day. Prices immediately climbed by more than 24 percent, with prices floating around US$9.97 per share by the middle of the day.

Similar to other brokerage firms, UP Fintech Holding primarily uses APPs to provide online trading services, which includes account openings, securities trading, and other securities services. The company generates the bulk of its profits through commission fees charged to traders on its platform. It also earns from interest and other fees made from various trading activities. As per its latest earnings report, the company had managed to rake in more than US$33.6 million in total revenue last year; a big jump from its US$16.9 million total revenue from the previous year.

UP Fintech Holding was originally established in China in 2014. A year later, the company launched its trading platform, which allowed customers to trade various financial instruments with other worldwide exchanges. In 2017, the firm became the largest online broker in China based on trades made with US securities. According to the brokerage research firm iResearch, UP Fintech Holding now has a majority market share of around 58.4 percent.

As of last year, over 1.5 million users have registered on the company's trading platform. Trading volumes within the platform reportedly reached more than US$119.2 billion in the same year. The company plans to further increase those numbers through the introduction of additional services. According to the company's CEO Wu Tianhua, they should be able to achieve this by integrating newer technologies to increase their platform's capabilities. The company is also aiming to make trading easier and more hassle-free in future updates, with users being able to connect to different global markets at the touch of a button.

The success of the company's platform has mostly come from its easy-to-use user interface, which provides customers with a superior user experience. According to NASDAQ Asia Pacific chairman Bob McCooey, the company is a great addition to the NASDAQ family as it does feature one of the most cutting-edge platforms in the industry. McCooey also believes that there is great potential for the company given that it is one of the most recognized trading platforms for Chinese investors.