What's going on?

Online trading platform IG Group revealed a better-than-expected revenue update on Thursday that its investors wouldn�t have swapped for anything.

What does this mean?

Analysts had been expecting IG to make about $780 million in revenue this financial year, which started in June. So when the company announced its first-quarter revenue alone was $270 million � over a third of that annual prediction and 62% higher than the same time last year � investors were all too happy to send its shares up 6%. IG reckons its success was partly thanks to 50% more active customers than the same time last year, as well as the 129% increase in new customers placing their first ever trade. It�s in good company too: rivals Plus500 and CMC Markets have both pointed to similarly positive trends recently.

Why should I care?

For you personally: See what you�ve done.

The more activity on IG�s platform, the more money it makes. So it would�ve been helped this summer by the risk-hungry �YOLO traders� who hoped to turn their stimulus checks into a quick buck � first by buying up shares of bankrupt companies, then by investing in short-term call options on big US tech stocks last month. And if that wasn�t risky enough, traders using IG tend to rely on borrowed money � or �leverage� � which amplifies potential losses as well as potential gains.

The bigger picture: Pick your poison.

IG makes its money from both trading commissions and �spreads� � that is, by offering the trader a slightly worse price than if they�d accessed the markets directly and pocketing the difference. There are trading platforms that offer �zero-fee� trading on certain assets these days, but there�s also no such thing as a free lunch. They need to make money from you somehow � and they might do it by selling your orders to brokers, or selling them to institutional investors who use your data to inform their own trades.