# The market dropped, so which 5 sectors are quietly being bought? A 22-year-old Taiwanese student built a paid Taiwan-stock tool from one bubble chart · Mobile app

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/apps/ios_6803365295.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
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> The founder posted a screenshot on Threads in 2026 June, when the Taiwan stock market fell: "The index dropped, but 5 sectors were being bought quietly." It went viral. He has discussed the market with it every day since, and TVBS and Business Today covered it. New retail investors are pouring in, and the existing tools are built for experienced traders.

[Mobile App](https://stringers.io/en/apps/index.md) · iOS · written 11-6

T

Tide: Taiwan stock sector rotation · Hung Chi Chen

# The market dropped, so which 5 sectors are quietly being bought? A 22-year-old Taiwanese student built a paid Taiwan-stock tool from one bubble chart

**What it is** An after-hours Taiwan-stock tool: every day after the close it totals institutional buying and selling by finer thematic sector and shows where money is leaving and arriving on one bubble chart. The free version is generous; Pro is a subscription for deeper data and history.

**Why it took off** When the Taiwan market fell sharply in June 2026, the founder posted a screenshot to Threads of "the market is down, but 5 sectors are being quietly bought," and it went viral. He kept using it to talk about the market every day, and TVBS and Business Today covered it. New retail investors flooded in, and existing tools were built for veterans.

**B** **How you could follow it** Don't build another one in Taiwan. Pick a market with public institutional flow data (Korea is the closest match). Someone who knows the local themes divides up the sectors themselves and makes one chart that can be screenshotted and shared, posts in local retail communities after every close, and launches web first, then app.

Grade B: the playbook is clear, few people know about it, and it can be copied into another market. But Taiwan already has two players gaining traction, so moving to a new market means betting on local thematic knowledge and on the founder posting daily for distribution, and the heat also rides on the market selloff. Circulating in small circles

Data (updated daily) · First released 2026-08-28 · Taiwan rating 253 · Charted in 11-08 of 1 stores

iOS · best category chart rank · by store

Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day

iOS · Ratings count · Taiwan

Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.

Tide only does one thing: after every close, it totals the three major institutional investor buy and sell figures across 108 self-defined thematic sectors and draws them as a bubble chart of "where the money is flowing." It has never appeared on the App Store free chart and has only 250 ratings, yet it sits at No. 33 in the Taiwan finance paid chart. Its users didn't come from the store; they came from a screenshot on Threads. The chart itself is the content, and that's the most worth learning. Copying it as-is in Taiwan has little upside; building it for another market is where it gets interesting.

### Jun 5, one Threads post

2026 June 5 was a Friday, and the Taiwan stock index closed down 1.33%. Ryan Chen (陈宏祁), a 22-year-old student who had just returned to Taiwan from the US, posted on his Threads account @ohoh_omg:

> The market is down -1.33% on Friday, but 5 sectors have big investors quietly buying. In a selloff like this, the sectors being quietly bought by big players are usually the best watchlist.

Below is a screenshot of the web page he built, tide-tw.app. The post got 3.3K likes, 322 replies and 2.6K shares. Three days later, on Monday (June 8), the Taiwan index at one point fell 2,600 points intraday, the largest intraday point drop in history. That same day the news site abmedia ran a long piece titled "Netizen-built Taiwan stock sector rotation map," saying the tool "spread quickly on Threads," and walking through the bubble chart, the "value ranking" and the "bottom-fishing detector" with screenshots.

The reason he gave for building it is on the "About" page of his site: when he looked at US stocks in America, opening a sector ETF showed where money was moving between industries; back in Taiwan he couldn't find the same thing. Taiwan's institutional data is published daily, but "it's a wall of numbers," and the existing tools that organize it "have interfaces and jargon written for veterans." TVBS reported that he wrote the program with AI.

### What it actually is

Opening it gives you a bubble chart: the horizontal axis is how much institutional money flowed net in over the past 5 days, the vertical axis is whether inflows are accelerating or slowing, and bubble size is the scale of money over the past 20 days. The four quadrants are called Rising Tide (earlier called "Main Force"), Rotation, Watch, and Ebbing. Click a sector and you see which stocks in it are being bought.

Two details set it apart from other chip-flow tools:

- **The sectors are self-defined.** The exchange's official industry categories are only about two dozen, and "semiconductors" lumps together a huge chunk of the market. Tide splits them into 108 thematic groups; for example, memory is split into modules, niche types and high-bandwidth. Each sector is tagged with "how many names are being bought" and "which name is bought the most," so one heavyweight stock can't carry an entire sector.

- **Plain-language explanations sit next to the jargon.** The longest review (9-05) says: "It presents three major institutional fund flows with bubble charts and tides, the presentation is fresh and intuitive… it doesn't cram in news or ads."

It only covers after-hours data: no candlestick charts, no earnings, no live quotes. Data is updated before 18:30 on every trading day.

### Where users come from: screenshots, media, then into the app

The timeline is clear:

| Timeline | What happened |
|---|---|
| Around late April 2026 | Web version tide-tw.app goes live |
| 6-05 / 6-08 | A post goes viral on Threads; on the day the Taiwan market sold off, a long news feature introduces it |
| 8-26 | TVBS reported on 〈Taiwan stock app booming! College student builds 'sector rotation' app〉, reprinted by LINE Today and Business Today 8-27; at the time the web sign-ups had passed 10K |
| 8-28 | The iOS version launches on the App Store, and first-day traffic overloads the backend |
| 9-06 | A day-trading influencer, "Day Trading Dad," publishes a long post, "the stock-watching app that's been hot on Threads lately," with 12.8k views, claiming it's not a paid promotion |
| 9-10 | In-app subscriptions go live |
| 10-17 | Home screen widget added |

The main channel is Threads. Taiwan accounts for over 20% of Threads' global traffic (Ketagalan Media, 2026-03), and that is where Taiwan's retail traders already talk stocks. Chen Hongqi posts a daily after-hours breakdown using his own screenshots, and the product is the post. Same-theme tools like FlowPulse, "What the three big institutions are buying," and Gemr Taiwan Stock Radar: Institutional Moves & Capital Rotation also launched in 2026, each with only 2–5 ratings. They use the same public data. What they lack is a chart people can repost and a person who talks the market on it every day.

Most App users look like they came over from the web version (inferred: the web version had 10k sign-ups first, the App was swamped on day one, and the App supports logging in with web subscriptions). No evidence found that they run paid ads.

### Where the money comes from

The free tier is not a trial. Bubble charts, rankings and watchlist alerts are all open, with no ads. Pro sells the next layer down: institutional breakdowns, financing data with a 20-day average price, per-stock history lookups, and unlimited watch slots. One thing that time builds: the official source only publishes same-day institutional breakdowns, not history. Tide saves a copy every day, and it gets more valuable the longer it runs.

| Where to buy | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| In-App (iOS) | NT$249 | NT$2,490 |
| Web | NT$199 | NT$1,990 (two-year plan also NT$3,290) |

The web price is 20% cheaper than in-app, and one subscription works across all platforms. It is steering payments to the web, so the App Store only sees part of the revenue. Total revenue is not public.

A few visible numbers (App Store Taiwan storefront, 11-06): 250 ratings, 4.8 stars, roughly 1 new installs a day over the past 10 days. Not on the Finance Top Free chart's top 200, but #33 on Finance Top Grossing. Small user base, high paying rate. Grossing rank follows the market: it fell to #137 from #11-03, then climbed back to #34 from #11-05, matching the week Taiex dropped 10,000 points in a month (Business Today 11-06). Like June, **when the market crashes, everyone wants to know where the money went** . The Android version has about 2,300 installs (Google Play, 10-29), with subscriptions handled on the web.

### Who it's competing with

| Competitors | Scale (Taiwan iOS) | How it differs from Tide |
|---|---|---|
| CMoney Chip K-line | 51k ratings, #1 on Finance Top Grossing | A veteran full-featured trading tool with K-lines, major players and broker branches, written for experienced traders |
| Disposition King | 9,730 ratings, Top Grossing #20 | Centers on individual stocks and disposition stocks, not a sector view |
| Lao Jian: Stock Market Insider Whales | 835 ratings, Top Grossing #27 | Only tracks insider whale holdings |
| Real-time Capital Radar | 104 ratings, charted on Top Grossing 31,2026-04 | A capital-flow tool from the same period focused on intraday real-time data, the closest match to Tide |
| StockIntelli | 489 ratings, best Top Grossing rank 53 | Covered in the same TVBS report as Tide, going with an "all-in-one app" approach |
| Sanzhu, XQ, Yahoo Finance Taiwan | Top players | Have sector moves and institutional rankings, but only as number tables |

In Taiwan, this slot already has two tools gaining traction (Tide and Real-time Capital Radar), and several later entrants didn't take off. Launching another Taiwan stock version means head-to-head competition with a product already covered by the media and a creator with 8,500 followers on Threads.

### The parts you can copy

1. **The product output is a single post.** "The market is down, but these 5 sectors are being quietly bought" is one headline, one chart and one question everyone wants to click. Before building the tool, ask: if a user screenshots this and shares it, will others understand it?

2. **The founder talks about the day's events with their own product every day.** Not product announcements, but "where the money went today."

3. **Web first, App second.** Validate on the web, build users, get media coverage; launch the App to bring in users in one go. Subscriptions work across platforms, and the web price is lower.

4. **Give generously for free, sell depth and history in Pro.** The free version has to be good enough that people share the screenshots.

5. **Make "no investment advice" a selling point.** No courses, no groups, no sponsored posts, subscriptions only. Where "teachers selling picks" are everywhere, this alone earns people's money.

### If it were you

**In short** : try a different market. The approach, "aggregate public institutional trading data by sub-theme, turn it into a chart retail traders can read, and post it yourself every day," is clear. Taiwan already has two players, and I haven't seen clear equivalents in other markets (inferred, not checked market by market). But it depends on two things followers may not have: real knowledge of local stock themes, and a founder willing to talk the market every day.

**Who it's for** : indie devs who know a particular stock market well and are already active in its retail communities. 1 person is enough. South Korea (the exchange publishes daily per-stock foreign and institutional net buying) is the closest to Taiwan; Hong Kong (Northbound/Southbound flows) and mainland China (Northbound and Dragon-Tiger list data) also have public data, but there are more tools and tighter regulation. Japan's investor-type data comes out weekly by market, not per stock, so it's a poor fit.

**Not for:** people who don't trade stocks and can't tell sectors apart. Whether a chart spreads depends on how you split the 108 sectors, and AI can't make that call for you. Also not for anyone unwilling to show their face or post every day, or anyone wanting to build a second one in Taiwan.

**How to do it** : launch on the web first, after-hours only, one chart: cumulative capital flow on the x-axis, acceleration on the y-axis, with four quadrants that have memorable names. Group sectors yourself and label each one with "how many stocks are buying and which one is buying the most." Free tier with no paywall and no ads. Once you have a few thousand sign-ups, add the App and subscriptions. Pro gets the breakdown data, history lookback and more alerts. Save the same-day official figures every day, since they never get published again.

**How to get users** : go where local retail traders talk stocks (Threads in Taiwan, online forums and YouTube in South Korea, Xueqiu and Xiaohongshu in mainland China). After each trading day closes, post a chart with one line: "The market is down, but these sectors are being bought." A crash day is the best day to post: everyone is panicking and everyone wants to know where the money went. Pitch local financial media on the story of "young people built a market tool with AI."

**When to get in** : there's no hard deadline, but ideally get the web version running before the next big sell-off. Tools like this spike on crash days, and they struggle to gain traction in flat markets.

**Signs you got it wrong** : ① during a flat stretch of several months in the Taiwan market, Tide's Finance Top Grossing rank falls out of the top 100 and doesn't come back. That means it's a business that rises and falls with the market, and that's true in any market. ② A brokerage or a major trading app (Sanzhu, CMoney, Toss in South Korea) builds a "sector capital-flow bubble chart" into its free tier. That takes the room out from under single-purpose tools. ③ The reverse: someone in your chosen market is already posting the same chart daily in local communities and getting traction. That spot is already taken.

---

Data and sources: App Store Taiwan storefront listing, version history, ratings and charts (2026-10-28 to 11-06); Google Play (10-29); tide-tw.app homepage, About page and pricing page; Threads posts by @ohoh_omg and @moneygame17588 (9-06); ABMedia (2026-06-08); TVBS (2026-08-26), Business Today (2026-08-27), LINE Today reprints; Ketagalan Media (2026-03-11). Web revenue and paying-user counts are not public. The date of June's viral post is inferred as 6-05 from "Friday drop of 1.33%" and ABMedia's article 6-08.

[iOS store page ↗](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6803365295)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taiwan Stock Chip K-line (CMoney) | iOS | 2015-08 | Taiwan 51,115 ratings, #1 on Finance Top Grossing | A veteran, full-featured chip-analysis tool written for experienced traders. Tide does only after-hours sector capital flow, with charts aimed at beginners. |
| Disposition King | iOS | 2021-06 | 9,730 ratings, charted on Finance Top Grossing 20 | Centers on individual stocks, disposition stocks and institutional rankings, not a sector view |
| Real-time Capital Radar | iOS | 2026-04-19 | 104 ratings, charted on Finance Top Grossing 31 | A capital-flow tool from the same period, leaning toward real-time intraday data. Tide does only after-hours and leads with its sector bubble chart. |
| StockIntelli | iOS | 2026-06-12 | 489 ratings, best Finance Top Grossing rank 53 | All-in-one app (chips, broker branches, official shareholdings, strategies). Tide does just one thing. |
| Sanzhu Smart Picks / XQ / Yahoo Finance Taiwan | iOS | Years | Leader | Have sector moves and institutional rankings, but as number tables, with no sector capital-acceleration chart |
| FlowPulse, Taiwan Major Player Hunter, What the Three Big Institutions Are Buying | iOS | 2026-04~07 | 2–5 ratings each | Same theme, but no shareable chart and no social distribution, so no traction |
| Blave Taiwan Sector Rotation Map | Web | Unverified | Unknown | A single page inside a data portal, using only foreign investor net buying/selling. Not a standalone product. |

Where users come from

- **Verified** **Threads founder viral post** : @ohoh_omg "Friday, the market fell -1.33%, but 5 sectors had big players quietly buying" 3.3K likes, 322 replies, 2.6K shares; ABMedia 6/8 reported the tool spread quickly on Threads.

- **Verified** **Retail / day-trader KOL, self-posted** : day trader 9/6 wrote a long post, "The trading app that's been blowing up on Dcard lately @tide_taiwan", 12.8K views (claims it's not sponsored)

- **Verified** **Media coverage** : TVBS 2026-08-26, Business Today 8/27, LINE Today reprint. Published two days before the iOS launch

- **Verified** **Tutorial article in the news** : abmedia 2026-06-08, 〈A sector-rotation map of Taiwan stocks made by a netizen〉

- Inferred **Existing web users moving to the app** : the web version had 10K+ sign-ups first; the app's first-day traffic overloaded the backend; the app supports logging in with web Pro accounts

- **Verified** **Dcard Investing board** : a post titled 〈I built a tool to track institutional chips〉 exists; the content was not readable

- Inferred **Paid ads** : no evidence found; the ad library does not track it

## Tide: why Taiwan's sector-rotation app (iOS id6803365295) took off

In short: a 22-year-old Taiwanese man with no programming background (Ryan Chen / 陳宏祁) used AI in late 2026 to build a web page that turns Taiwan stock market institutional net buying and selling into a "fund-flow bubble chart" across 108 custom sector themes. During the June 2026 Taiwan stock sell-off, a screenshot he posted on Threads, "the market is falling, but big players are quietly buying 5 sectors," went viral. The web version gained over 10,000 registrations in 3–4 months. After TVBS and Business Today coverage in August, it launched as an app 8/28, and 9/10 added in-app subscriptions. It's now #33 in Taiwan's finance Top Grossing chart. **It's a product that grew on Threads; the App Store is just where the money is collected.**

### 1. Data (our database + store pages)

| Item | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Launched | iOS 2026-08-28 (1.0); 9/10 1.1 plus in-app subscriptions; 10/12 1.3; 10/17 1.3.2 (home-screen widget); 11/4 1.3.3 | App Store Taiwan version history |
| Rating | Taiwan store 250 (11/6), 4.8 stars; 10/28–11/6 total +12, about 1 per day | appstore DB app_day |
| Top Grossing | Taiwan finance Top Grossing #10/28 49 → #11/3 137 → #11/5 34 → #11/6 33; not in the finance Top Free top 200 | appstore DB app_day / chart_rank 2026-11-06 |
| Pricing | In app: Pro monthly NT$249, yearly NT$2,490; web: monthly NT$199, yearly NT$1,990, two-year NT$3,290 | Taiwan App Store page; tide-tw.app/pricing |
| Android | app.tw.tide, about 2,347 installs (1,000+ downloads); the store listing doesn't show in-app purchases (subscriptions go through the web) | googleplay DB 2026-10-29 |
| Web | tide-tw.app; 2026-08-26 accounts registered 10,100+ | TVBS 2026-08-26 |
| Communities | Founder's Threads @ohoh_omg with 8,536 followers; official @tide_taiwan (opened 8/8), IG, FB fan page | Threads profile |

Reading this: it's not in the free charts and has only 250 ratings, yet it reached #33 on the finance Top Grossing chart, which means the iOS user base is small but the paying rate is high. Moreover, the 1.1 version notes say "users who already subscribed to Pro on other platforms can keep using it by logging into the same account," and web prices are 20% cheaper than in-app. iOS revenue is only part of the total; most is likely from web subscriptions (unverified). The chart rank went from #11/3–11/5 back to #137 34, right in the week Taiwan stocks fell 10,000 points in a month (Business Today 11/6 headline: "Taiwan stocks crash 10,000 points in 1 months"), the same as the June episode: **when the market drops, people most want to know where the money went, and it sells well.**

### 2. Competitors

| Product | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Tide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taiwan Stock Chip K-line (CMoney) | iOS/Android | 2015 | Taiwan 51,115 ratings, #1 on Finance Top Grossing | A veteran full-featured chip-tracking tool with candlesticks, major players, and broker-level data, written for experienced traders; Tide only does after-hours sector capital flow, shown as a bubble chart for beginners |
| stockwarden (處置王) | iOS/web | 2021 | 9,730 ratings, charted on Finance Top Grossing 20 | Full institutional chip data, state-fund holdings, synced signals; centered on individual stocks and disposition stocks, not a sector view |
| Lao Jian (Stock Market Insider Whales) | iOS | 2020 | 835 ratings, charted on Finance Top Grossing 27 | Tracks insider large-holder positions; a single chip dimension |
| Real-time Capital Radar | iOS | 2026-04-19 | 104 rating, finance Top Grossing #31 (11/6) | A capital-flow tool released at the same time, leaning toward real-time intraday data; Tide explicitly does only after-hours |
| StockIntelli (股市智投, Yang Hao-wen) | iOS/web | 2026-06-12 | 489 ratings, best Finance Top Grossing rank 53 | Same TVBS article as Tide; goes the all-in-one app route (chips, broker data, state funds, strategies), while Tide does a single thing |
| Sanchu Smart Picks, XQ, Yahoo Stock | iOS/Android | Years | Leader | Has sector gains/losses and institutional rankings, but as number tables; no sector capital flow × acceleration chart |
| Gemr Taiwan Stock Radar: institutional moves and capital rotation | iOS | 2026-07-08 | 4 rating | The name is literally "institutions + capital rotation"; launched after Tide's June spike and barely gained traction |
| FlowPulse / Taiwan Stock Main Force Hunter / What the three institutional groups are buying | iOS | 2026-04~07 | 2–5 ratings each | Small apps on the same theme; none took off |
| Blave Taiwan Sector Rotation Map | Web | Unverified | Unknown | A sector-rotation map drawn from foreign investor net buying, a page inside a crypto/Taiwan-stock data site, not a standalone product |
| US sector ETFs / Finviz heatmaps | Web | Years | Big | The founder's inspiration: in the US you can see where money is going at a glance with sector ETFs; Taiwan had nothing like it |

Bottom line: chip data for Taiwan stocks is everywhere (the TWSE publishes it daily), and there are many apps that rank institutional buying. **But the format of "aggregating institutional money by fine-grained theme sectors, presenting it as a quadrant bubble chart of inflow × acceleration, for beginners," had no decent product before Tide.** Several similar apps appeared around the same time 2026 (real-time capital radar, FlowPulse, Gemr, What the three institutional groups are buying). Apart from the real-time capital radar, none took off. The difference is distribution, not data.

### 3. Where users come from

1. **Threads viral posts (main channel, confirmed)** . The founder's personal account @ohoh_omg posted "Friday, the market fell -1.33%, but 5 sectors have big players quietly buying" with a bubble-chart screenshot. It got 3.3K likes, 322 replies, 195 reposts, and 2.6K shares. The following Monday (6/8), the Taiwan market fell a record 2,600 points intraday, and abmedia ran a feature explaining the tool had "spread quickly on Threads" with step-by-step tutorials. Taiwan users account for over 21% of Threads' global traffic (Ketagalan Media 2026-03), and Threads is where retail investors in Taiwan talk stocks. He has since posted daily after-hours commentary as screenshots, making the product itself the content.

2. **Retail / day-trader KOL, self-posted (confirmed)** . Day trader "Dad" @moneygame17588 9/6 posted a long post, "The trading app that's been blowing up on Dcard lately @tide_taiwan," explaining how to use the four-quadrant bubble chart. It got 12.8K views, and he claims it's not sponsored (he sent small gifts at the end; whether there was a collaboration is unverified). User testimonials were also reshared on the FB fan page.

3. **Mainstream media (confirmed)** . TVBS 2026-08-26 ran a story titled "Taiwan stock app is hot! College student builds a sector rotation tool", LINE Today reposted it, and Business Today 8/27 reposted it too. It landed two days before the iOS launch, with the angle "22-year-old college student writes a stock-watching tool with AI".

4. **Self-posted on the Dcard Investing board (confirmed to exist, content blocked so unread)** : 〈I built a tool to track institutional chips〉.

5. **Web → app migration by existing users (inferred, strong evidence)** : the web version had 10K+ registered users first; after the app launched, the backend was overloaded on day one (recorded in the data cards); the app supports logging in with a web subscription account. Most of the iOS ratings were accumulated in the first few weeks after launch.

6. **Retention tools** : daily pre-market highlights 08:30, closing-bell votes 13:35, after-hours settlement 18:05–18:35, a Saturday watchlist review push, and bull/bear votes plus track record (homepage); chip-movement alerts for watchlist stocks.

7. **Paid ads** : no evidence found (our ad library doesn't track it; not finding it doesn't mean it didn't run ads).

### 4. Why now, why it sticks, why people pay

- **Timing** : in 2026 Taiwan stocks swung sharply from the 40,000-point level (around 45K in August, and in November a single month wiped out 10,000 points to 37K), and investors under 30 entered the market at a record pace (Yahoo Stock investor survey 2026, reported by TVBS the same day). The biggest confusion for new retail investors is "where did the money go today," and the existing tools are written for veterans.

- **The hook** : no stock tips, just a chart of which sectors institutional money is flowing into or out of and whether that flow is accelerating or slowing, readable at a glance; each term has a plain-language explanation next to it (the "how to read this table" section TVBS mentioned). Reviews said: "Using tide and bubble charts to show three major institutional capital flows, the presentation is novel and intuitive" and "it doesn't cram in news or ads."

- **The sectors are self-defined** : official industry categories are only about two dozen, so Tide split them into 108 custom theme sectors (memory split into modules/niche/high-bandwidth), and flags "how many stocks are being bought and which one is bought most." This is the chart users most often repost on Threads, and it's the part others can't easily copy (it takes real knowledge of Taiwan-stock themes).

- **Paywall design** : the free tier is not a trial, has no ads, and all core bubble charts are open, so it gets shared widely on Threads. Pro sells one layer deeper: foreign-fund co-buy lists, consecutive days of foreign buying, institutional 20-day average cost, margin 20-day average cost, historical lookback, and unlimited watched stocks. It also stores daily institutional breakdown data that the exchange only publishes for the current day and never keeps as history, so the longer it runs, the more valuable that history becomes.

- **Trust stance** : solo developer, no sponsored posts, no paid courses, no groups, subscription-only. The three major institutional investor data is licensed from the exchange for a fee. In Taiwan, where "teachers" pushing trade tips are everywhere, this stance is itself the selling point.

### 5. Differentiation, and whether it explains the breakout

Differentiation = **"sector view + capital-acceleration four-quadrant bubble chart + plain-language explanations for beginners"** , plus its own custom sub-theme sector taxonomy. The data itself is not the differentiator (anyone can get it).

Is that the reason? Yes, but it has to be read alongside distribution. The chart is naturally suited to screenshots shared on social media: one image is one post ("market's down, but these 5 sectors are being quietly bought"), so the product format became its distribution mechanism. Same-period products on the same theme, like FlowPulse, Gemr, and 三大法人買什麼, have only single-digit ratings. That shows "institutional fund flow" alone isn't enough; the key factors were (a) the shareable chart, (b) the founder using it daily to talk markets on Threads, and (c) launching right at the moment of the sell-off.

### 6. Visibility and copycats

- Visibility: **talked about within a small circle** . Taiwanese retail investor circles on Threads and reports from TVBS and 今周刊 have covered it, but revenue is not public (no TrustMRR listing, the founder has not shown revenue). No discussion turned up on X (x-radar: 180 posts in the last 0 days). No coverage in the English-speaking world.

- Copycats: Gemr 台股雷達 (Taiwan Stock Radar: institutional flows and capital rotation, listed 2026-07-08, clearly named around "capital rotation", 4 ratings) can be counted as a follow-on. Other apps in the same theme appeared before or alongside Tide, so they don't count as copies.

### 7. What to borrow

1. **Turn the product output into a single image that can be posted directly on social media.** The founder uses the product to comment on current events every day (on the selloff day, posting "who is quietly buying"). The product is the content.

2. **Web first, app later** : validate on the web and get the first 1 10k users, then push traffic in one go when the app launches. Subscriptions work across platforms, and web pricing is lower than in-app pricing, which steers revenue toward the web.

3. **Give generous free access, sell "one layer deeper + history" in Pro** : store the data the exchange only publishes for the current day, and the history becomes the paywall.

4. **Find a perspective that exists in other markets but not in yours** : the US market has sector ETFs and heatmaps, Taiwan's doesn't. The same model can be copied to Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and mainland China stocks (each has public institutional and foreign-investor trading data).

5. **In a regulation-sensitive category, make "we don't give advice" a selling point.**

### 8. Still uncertain

- Number of paying web users and total web revenue (iOS is only part of it); in-app subscription conversion rate.

- The exact date of the June viral post (inferred from "Friday market fell 1.33%" and the abmedia 6/8 article to be 6/5 or the Friday before).

- Whether the 當沖老爹 and other KOL posts involve partnerships or revenue sharing, and whether they run Meta ads.

- Whether popularity follows the market: best-seller rankings rise during selloffs, so if Taiwan stocks go flat, growth may slow. About 1 new ratings per day; it is not in a breakout phase right now.

### Sources

- App Store Taiwan page: [apps.apple.com/tw/app/id6803365295](https://apps.apple.com/tw/app/id6803365295) (version history, price, 253 reviews 4.8)

- Website: [tide-tw.app/](https://tide-tw.app/), [tide-tw.app/about.html](https://tide-tw.app/about.html), [tide-tw.app/pricing.html](https://tide-tw.app/pricing.html)

- TVBS 2026-08-26: [news.tvbs.com.tw/money/4013120](https://news.tvbs.com.tw/money/4013120); 今周刊 2026-08-27: [www.businesstoday.com.tw/article/category/183008/post/202608…](https://www.businesstoday.com.tw/article/category/183008/post/202608270028/); LINE Today repost: [today.line.me/tw/v3/article/RBqV9Zj](https://today.line.me/tw/v3/article/RBqV9Zj)

- ABMedia (鏈新聞) 2026-06-08: [abmedia.io/taiwan-stock-buy-the-dip](https://abmedia.io/taiwan-stock-buy-the-dip)

- Threads viral post: [www.threads.com/@ohoh_omg/post/DZRbSwvAYCn](https://www.threads.com/@ohoh_omg/post/DZRbSwvAYCn) ; founder's profile [www.threads.com/@ohoh_omg](https://www.threads.com/@ohoh_omg) ; Day-trading dad 2026-09-06: [www.threads.com/@moneygame17588/post/Dc8dgOgmSIy](https://www.threads.com/@moneygame17588/post/Dc8dgOgmSIy)

- Dcard: [www.dcard.tw/f/money/p/261652465](https://www.dcard.tw/f/money/p/261652465) (blocked by Cloudflare, only the title is visible)

- Google Play:[play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.tw.tide](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.tw.tide)

- Threads in Taiwan: [ketagalanmedia.com/2026/03/11/the-digital-night-market-why-t…](https://ketagalanmedia.com/2026/03/11/the-digital-night-market-why-threads-is-so-popular-in-taiwan/)

- Our database: appstore (app_day, chart_rank Taiwan store 2026-10-28~11-06), googleplay (app_profile 2026-10-29), x-radar

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.