QFEX: The 24/7 Brokerless Stock Exchange Changing Global Trading

In an age where instant access, 24/7 services, and borderless innovation are becoming the norm, global financial markets remain frustratingly stuck in the past. Enter QFEX, a revolutionary platform designed to modernize the trading experience for everyone, from retail traders to institutional giants. Based in London and founded in 2025 by Annanay Kapila and Joshua Wharton, QFEX is building what it calls the “24/7 Global Stock Exchange.” This new-age exchange lets users trade US equities, commodities, and FX pairs around the clock—without a broker, and with leverage up to 100x.

QFEX isn’t just reimagining market hours. It's reconstructing the entire trading experience by removing traditional barriers, eliminating predatory middlemen, and replacing outdated systems with sleek, user-first technology.

Why Are Traditional Financial Markets Still So Outdated?

Despite trillions of dollars being traded daily across the world, traditional financial exchanges still suffer from severe limitations. These include:

Limited trading hours — Markets are often closed on weekends and holidays, stalling strategies and frustrating traders.
Mandatory broker intermediaries — Retail traders must route their trades through brokers, creating delays and reducing transparency.
Low leverage options — Regulated markets rarely offer more than 20x leverage, and margin fees can be crippling.
Archaic interfaces — Platforms like Interactive Brokers often have outdated GUIs and unintuitive workflows.

While the crypto world has evolved into fast, flexible, and global platforms, traditional markets have clung to century-old structures. QFEX is here to shatter that model.

Who’s Behind QFEX?

QFEX is the brainchild of Annanay Kapila and Joshua Wharton, both of whom met at the University of Cambridge while studying Mathematics. After graduation, their careers took them to the upper echelons of quantitative finance—working at Tower Research Capital, Flow Traders, and Citadel.

It was during these years that they realized the massive inefficiencies in how global markets operate. If crypto exchanges could provide instant access, deep liquidity, and high leverage, why couldn’t traditional markets do the same? This question ultimately gave rise to QFEX.

The founders combined deep knowledge in quantitative research, trading systems, and algorithmic execution to build something they themselves wanted to use: a fast, fair, and modern exchange.

What Makes QFEX Technologically Unique?

QFEX is not a frontend makeover. It’s a foundational redesign of how exchanges operate. Some of its standout features include:

Brokerless Market Access: Traders can access the exchange directly without routing through third parties.
24/7 Trading: No market closes. No dead weekends. No time zone frustrations.
Ultra-Leveraged Trading: Users can access up to 100x leverage on all major asset classes.
Perpetual Futures: Inspired by crypto, QFEX introduces perps for traditional assets—marking a world-first for equities, commodities, and FX.
Volume-Based Fees: No payment for order flow. QFEX earns only when users trade, promoting fairness and liquidity.

This exchange is built for speed, transparency, and efficiency, eliminating the legacy friction points that frustrate traders daily.

How Is QFEX Different from Other Broker Platforms?

Platforms like Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, and even larger institutional desks rely on outdated infrastructures:

Robinhood sells order flow to hedge funds like Citadel, which can then front-run retail orders.
Interactive Brokers caters to professionals but still forces users to navigate bloated and confusing interfaces.
Traditional Exchanges often require costly clearinghouses and intermediaries.

QFEX removes all of this. It is brokerless, clearance-free, and ultra-intuitive, providing a next-generation solution for a new breed of global trader.

It’s no longer just about access; it’s about ownership of the experience. QFEX’s seamless UX and transparent fee structure are designed with the trader—not the middleman—in mind.

What Are Perpetual Futures—and Why Do They Matter?

Perpetual futures (or "perps") revolutionized crypto markets by offering contracts that never expire, ensuring smoother trading without rollovers or expiration-induced volatility. While widely used in crypto, no one had ever applied perps to traditional financial instruments—until now.

QFEX allows users to trade perpetual contracts on S&P 500, commodities like oil or gold, and even major FX pairs. The result? Reduced rolling costs, less operational overhead, and deeper, more unified liquidity.

By eliminating expiry dates, QFEX is transforming the derivative landscape in the same way that crypto exchanges did—but now, for traditional markets.

How Big Is the Opportunity?

QFEX isn’t just innovating for the sake of novelty. It’s targeting a massive industry. The global exchange and clearing industry is worth over $100 billion. Most of that value is tied up in legacy systems, unnecessary intermediaries, and slow-moving operations.

By streamlining the entire stack—from trading and matching to settlement—QFEX is in a position to undercut incumbents and consolidate liquidity. This has far-reaching implications for:

Retail Traders — Faster, fairer trades with more transparency and optionality.
Institutional Traders — Billions saved in rolling costs, better liquidity, and more flexibility.
Emerging Markets — Access to US equities and global commodities with fewer restrictions.

In many ways, QFEX is building not just an exchange, but a borderless financial engine for the future.

What’s Next for QFEX?

While the current iteration supports 24/7 leveraged trading across multiple asset classes, the team is actively working to expand both depth and breadth. Their roadmap includes:

Mobile-native trading experience with ultra-fast order execution.
Expanded asset classes, including European and Asian equities.
Real-time risk analytics and customizable dashboards.
Liquidity incentives and staking mechanisms for market makers.
API access for algorithmic and high-frequency traders.

The goal? To not just disrupt trading platforms, but to replace legacy exchanges entirely.

What Regulatory Challenges Might QFEX Face?

Operating a global, brokerless, and leveraged exchange doesn’t come without hurdles, particularly in the highly regulated world of finance. QFEX will need to:

Comply with cross-border securities regulations, especially in the U.S., EU, and Asia.
Establish transparent KYC/AML processes to prevent illicit activity.
Ensure the custody and risk management infrastructure is compliant with institutional standards.

However, given the founders’ backgrounds in top-tier trading firms and the platform’s emphasis on transparency, these challenges appear more as milestones than roadblocks. With the right regulatory strategy, QFEX could set a new precedent for compliant 24/7 financial infrastructure.

How Could QFEX Change Global Finance?

If successful, QFEX will serve as a blueprint for the next generation of capital markets. It offers a vision where:

Markets are open around the clock and across geographies.
Traders—big or small—get equal access to leverage and speed.
Perpetual futures replace outdated derivatives.
Trading becomes transparent, direct, and low-cost.

This is more than a technological shift—it’s a philosophical one. It challenges the entrenched interests of legacy institutions and makes a compelling case for fairer and more open markets.

As co-founders Annanay and Joshua put it:

“We’re not building an exchange for today. We’re building the one we always wish we had.”

And in doing so, QFEX just might become the most important trading infrastructure of the decade.