I am a full time trader and part time developer based in
Karachi, Pakistan.
A year ago I sat down to research how to properly compare
brokers on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. Three hours later
I had 11 browser tabs open, two of which had broken links,
one had data from 2019, and none of them had everything
I needed in one place.
So I built PSX Pulse.
What PSX Pulse Is
PSX Pulse is a free stock market education platform for
Pakistani retail investors. Everything a beginner needs
to start investing in Pakistan's stock market — in one place.
What is live right now:
- 35 verified SECP-licensed brokers with full contact details
- Complete mutual funds directory across 15 AMCs
- DCA calculator with realistic return scenarios
- 30-day beginner learning path
- Islamic investing guide
- PSX sector guide covering 12 sectors
- IPO tracker
- 100-term searchable glossary
- Weekly market recap every Friday
All free. No login required.
Live at: https://psxpulse.xwen.com.pk/
The Stack
React + Tailwind CSS for the frontend.
Vercel for hosting — free tier handles everything comfortably.
No backend for most features — localStorage and static data
keeps it fast and simple.
Newsletter handled via a serverless Vercel function
writing to a private GitHub CSV.
What I Learned Building This Solo
1. The information gap in emerging markets is enormous
Pakistani investors are not underserved because nobody cares.
They are underserved because nobody with the technical skills
to build tools also has the market knowledge to know what
those tools should do. Being both a trader and a developer
turned out to be the actual unfair advantage.
2. Free tools beat content for SEO
My DCA calculator and broker directory pages get more
consistent Google clicks than any article I have written.
Tools solve a specific search intent that AI overviews
do not replace — people still need to interact with
a calculator, not just read about one.
3. Building in public is uncomfortable but worth it
Sharing what you are building before it is perfect
feels wrong. But the feedback from real users in the
first two weeks shaped the product more than months
of solo planning ever could.
What Is Next
Currently working on:
- Growing organic search traffic through SEO articles
- Activating broker affiliate partnerships
- Building The PSX Weekly newsletter subscriber base
Also building XWEN Compare — a crypto exchange fee
comparison platform at cryptocompare.xwen.com.pk —
using the same approach.
If you are building fintech tools for emerging markets
or just curious about the PSX Pulse stack, drop a
question in the comments. Happy to share anything
that might be useful.
Follow along — I will be writing about building
fintech tools as a solo trader-developer here regularly.
Top comments (1)
I think the most interesting lesson here is that emerging markets often have information problems, not technology problems.
The opportunity isn’t always building something technically complex. Sometimes it’s organizing fragmented information into a form people can actually use.
Also, your trader + developer combination is a huge advantage. Domain expertise is often much harder to acquire than technical skills.
Greetings from Türkiye 🇹🇷 and best of luck growing PSX Pulse. It’s great to see local ecosystems getting tools built by people who genuinely understand the market