XI’AN, China, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — An international exchange event in the “Global Civilization Dialogues: Rendezvous with the Orchid” series recently took place in Xi’an. The initiative was held under the guidance of China International Communications Group (CICG) and the Publicity Department of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee, and organized by the Orchid Awards Secretariat, the China Center for International Communication Development (CCICD), and the Publicity Department of the Xi’an Municipal Party Committee.

The Orchid Awards is an international cultural prize founded by CICG to recognize foreign individuals and institutions dedicated to strengthening cultural ties between China and the rest of the world. Over 20 guests—among them final-round judges and participants in the Third Orchid Awards, along with social media creators from Cambodia, Germany, Brazil, and the UK—joined a four-day immersive tour of the ancient capital.

The delegation’s first stop was the Xi’an Museum, whose “Ancient Capital Xi’an” exhibit presents a rich trove of relics spanning the Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties through the Ming and Qing—charting the history of a city that served as a capital under 13 dynasties. Guests lingered over the displays, absorbing the depth of Chinese civilization.

They then headed to the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor and its Terracotta Warriors. Each figure bears a distinct face, and the craftsmanship is remarkable—a vivid portrayal of the Qin army and a valuable source of physical evidence for studying the era. The underground formation left a lasting impression on Chinese and international visitors alike.

After revisiting ancient history, the delegation proceeded to local tech firms to observe China’s manufacturing innovation up close. At LONGi, they learned about the company’s latest strides in solar and energy storage, including industrial applications of AI and solar-powered green hydrogen. They next toured the exhibition hall at BYD’s Xi’an R&D center, learning about the company’s history, global footprint, and core electric vehicle technologies—and seeing firsthand the advances in China’s electric vehicle industry.

During their stay, guests are also scheduled to participate in the “Orchid • Encounter the Millennium-Old Ancient Capital” International Cultural Salon and visit industrial and cultural sites including the Aiju Grain and Oil Industrial Group and the Chang’an Twelve Hours cultural district. These visits offer further opportunities to explore how Xi’an is preserving its heritage, supporting industrial innovation, and opening up to the world—and to use cultural exchange as a bridge for telling China’s story and Xi’an’s story, deepening mutual understanding between China and other nations.

Since the Orchid Awards was inaugurated, the series has traveled to Beijing, Guangzhou, Dunhuang, Chongqing, Chengdu, and Harbin. Through site visits and face-to-face discussions, the Xi’an stop gives international guests an immersive taste of China’s millennia-old cultural heritage—and a firsthand look at the country’s modern vitality. It provides a forum for deepening cultural exchange between China and the world.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/global-civilization-dialogues-series-arrives-in-xian-with-orchid-awards-guests-302897651.html

SOURCE ORCHID AWARDS SECRETARIAT

The general public can now both sell and shop unique creations on a better handmade marketplace that’s fully controlled and operated in-house, by artisan hands.

GLADSTONE, Ore., Oct. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Exactly three years after launching it’s beta test, this week Artisans Cooperative opened it’s online marketplace platform for handmade goods run by people and for people. The general public can now both sell and shop unique creations on a better handmade marketplace that’s fully controlled and operated in-house, by artisan hands.

Artisans Cooperative marketplace is a fair, artisan-owned platform that values craftsmanship, transparency, and ethical trade.The massive influx of mass-produced, drop-shipped goods on major platforms like Etsy and Amazon has made it nearly impossible for authentic artisans to survive on mainstream marketplaces. Creative business owners want to be part of something genuine that stands for honesty instead of profits, and cares to market their products directly to customers who value handmade goods and the artisans who create them. Meanwhile, conscious shoppers are looking for shame free shopping where they can make their dollar count in supporting creative livelihoods.

“Artists and crafters NEED a space that isn’t just another venture capital-funded business…So this is exactly the right combination of ideals and beliefs that I’ve been looking for”. – Artisans Member

“It has been harder and harder to find authentic and handmade items for years. I hate having to search through 15 pages of dropship shops before finding an actual artist. Artisans Cooperative makes it easy!” – Artisans Member, Lizzy

Mass-produced, drop-shipped goods and increasingly volatile rules and fees make it nearly impossible for authentic artisans to survive, even with the support of conscious shoppers. None of that is welcome at Artisans. Skill and judgment must be so critical to the creation process of listed products that experienced industry peers can verify the artisan could have potentially ruined listed products in the process, but they didn’t. Simple, transparent commissions from free listings keep authentically handmade goods available at reasonable prices for shame-free shopping by customers who value the story and artistry behind the piece.

“I don’t want to line the pockets of large corporations who only look out for themselves. Instead, I want to support the people who are making things and have a small portion go to … connecting the buyers and sellers”. – Artisans Member, Adam

“I love that my handmade work has a place among … other authentically handmade artisan products. I really appreciate that Artisans Cooperative puts it’s artisans first.” – Artisans Member, Erin

About Artisans Cooperative Artisans Cooperative built a better handmade marketplace for the online creative community following the collective loss of trust in Etsy management after the 2022 #EtsyStrike.

Media Contact

mastress, Artisans Cooperative, 1 503-789-2805, people@artisans.coop, artisans.coop

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prweb.com/releases/handmade-businesses-have-a-new-marketplace—and-they-own-it-302896862.html

SOURCE Artisans Cooperative

VANCOUVER, BC, Oct. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — USA News Group News Commentary – Mordor Intelligence values the online trading platform market at $11.65 billion in 2025 and projects $18.18 billion by 2031, a compound annual growth rate of 7.66% from 2026 to 2031. Active Companies from around the markets with current developments this week include: Quote Daddy (quotedaddy.com), Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: IBKR), Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (Cboe BZX: CBOE), Block, Inc. (NYSE: XYZ), and Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL).

A second forecaster lands in the same neighbourhood. Fortune Business Insights puts the market at $10.82 billion in 2025 and $11.57 billion in 2026, rising to $18.50 billion by 2034, a 6.00% compound annual growth rate from 2026 to 2034, and points to AI-driven analytics, digital assets and mobile adoption as drivers. Both figures are third-party projections of market value, not revenue any single company will capture, and the gap in growth rates reflects different forecast windows and methods.

The Mordor report is specific about where the activity is. It says smartphones have become the primary entry point for retail investors, that retail investors accounted for 69.59% of platform volume in 2025, and that cloud-based deployment held 63.42% of the market. It also highlights API-based brokerage-as-a-service, which lets fintech companies embed trading without building a full broker-dealer. In other words, execution is becoming easier to supply, and the competitive question is shifting to information: who gives an individual investor the cleanest view of live quotes, company filings, insider activity and what large institutions are holding.

Share prices across the retail brokerage and investing-app group have been uneven this year, which makes recent operating results more informative than the sector label. This week’s developments, covered below, come from a broker, an exchange operator, a consumer finance app and the platform that distributes many of the apps retail investors use. First, a look at a free tracking dashboard built for that information layer.

Quote Daddy Puts Live Quotes, SEC Filings and Top-Investor 13F Data in One Free Dashboard Covering U.S. and Canadian Markets

Free to use, with no credit card and no paywalls, according to the Quote Daddy site.U.S. stocks and ETFs on NYSE and Nasdaq stream live during market hours, with intraday sparklines on every watchlist row.Canadian coverage across TSX, TSX-V and CSE, with Canadian listings delayed by 15 minutes or more, per the app’s FAQ.SEC filings and Form 4 insider activity on stock pages, including 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K documents.13F filings from top investors and disclosed congressional trades on the Top Investors page.

Quote Daddy describes itself with a single line: “Every quote that matters, in one clean dashboard.” It is a free stock-tracking application for the web and desktop at app.quotedaddy.com, with iOS and Android apps. It is owned and operated by Market Equities Limited, the parent of this publication, a relationship disclosed in more detail below. Quote Daddy states that it is not a broker-dealer and that nothing in the app is financial, investment, tax or legal advice, which places it on the information side of the sector rather than the trading side.

The tracking layer. The platform’s stock pages combine interactive candlestick charts from one day to the maximum range, five, ten and twenty-day moving averages and volume, live bid and ask spreads with sizes for U.S. stocks, and key fundamentals including market cap, price-to-earnings, earnings per share and dividend yield. Watchlists can be sorted by gainers and losers, carry private notes, sync across devices and be shared by link, and a portfolio view tracks live profit and loss, cost basis and dividends. A markets section covers indices, futures, crypto and top movers. These are the same categories of data the larger brokerage apps compete on, offered here without a subscription.

Filings and institutional positioning. The platform reads SEC filings inside the app and surfaces Form 4 insider transactions on each stock page. Its Top Investors section publishes the latest 13F filings from major fund managers, among them Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood, alongside disclosed trades by members of Congress, and lets users import a portfolio into a watchlist in one tap. The site is direct about the limits: 13F filings and congressional disclosures are reported on a delay of roughly 45 days, so figures may be out of date. It also warns that the roughly one-year return figures shown on each profile are rough, illustrative approximations that are not verified, and that nothing on the page is an endorsement by, or affiliation with, any individual named.

AI summaries and sentiment. Quote Daddy adds plain-English explanations of stock moves, daily movement summaries with sector performance context, and retail sentiment drawn from StockTwits. Its FAQ says the briefings “won’t tell you what to buy or sell” and “can occasionally get something wrong,” and that nothing they write is financial advice. Market data is supplied by third parties, including Finnhub, and is provided for informational purposes only.

There are several risks associated with Quote Daddy and with the information in this commentary. Quote Daddy is owned by the same company that owns this publication, which is a conflict of interest and a reason to read this article critically. It is not a broker-dealer, does not execute trades and does not provide advice. Market data is supplied by third parties, may be delayed, and is not guaranteed to be accurate or complete; Canadian quotes are delayed by 15 minutes or more. AI-generated summaries can be wrong, 13F and congressional data are reported with a delay and may be stale, and the one-year return figures on investor profiles are unverified approximations. The retail investing sector is crowded with large, well-funded brokers that also offer free tools, and the market-size forecasts above are projections that may not be realized. Nothing in this article should be used as the basis for an investment decision.

CONTINUED… Read this and more news about Quote Daddy at: quotedaddy.com

In other industry developments and happenings in the market this week include:

Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: IBKR)

Interactive Brokers reported September 2026 metrics on October 1, with 4.111 million daily average revenue trades, 6% higher than a year earlier and 4% lower than August, and 5.576 million client accounts, 35% higher than a year earlier. Ending client equity was $964.7 billion, 27% higher than a year earlier and about even with the prior month, and client margin loan balances were $105.2 billion, up 36%. The average commission per cleared commissionable order was $2.57. The figures are listed on the Company’s investor relations press release page.

On September 15, Interactive Brokers announced an integration with X Cashtags that it said “gives US investors a direct path from following stock and crypto conversations on X to trading on Interactive Brokers.” New U.S. clients who open and fund a qualifying account through the Cashtags experience receive $100, and the feature is currently available to U.S.-based investors only. The release notes that the Company serves over 5 million client accounts worldwide.

Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (Cboe BZX: CBOE)

Cboe reported August 2026 trading volume on September 3, with average daily volume of 14,801 thousand contracts in multi-listed options, 5,743 thousand contracts in index options and 1,481 million matched shares in U.S. equities on-exchange. It said its mini-SPX (XSP) options set a monthly ADV record of 241 thousand contracts, eclipsing the previous record set in July.

In its second quarter results on July 31, Cboe reported total revenues of $1,442.8 million and net revenue of $731.6 million, up 25%, with diluted EPS of $3.35, up 50%, and adjusted diluted EPS of $3.56, up 45%. Options net revenue was a record $473.9 million, and the Company raised its 2026 organic net revenue growth target to “mid to high teens.” Its materials also describe the divestiture of its Canadian business, and Cboe Canada is one of the venues whose delayed quotes Quote Daddy lists, so the ownership of that feed may change.

Block, Inc. (NYSE: XYZ)

Block’s second quarter 2026 shareholder letter reported gross profit of $3.17 billion, up 25% year over year, with Cash App gross profit of $1.97 billion, up 31%, and adjusted diluted EPS of $1.02, up 65%. Cash App primary banking actives grew 17% year over year to 9.4 million. The Company raised its 2026 outlook to gross profit of $12.51 billion and adjusted diluted EPS of $4.02.

Block also said Cash App expanded stablecoin support through an integration with USDC, while its bitcoin ecosystem gross profit declined 31% year over year after a deliberate decision to lower the fee charged on certain bitcoin transactions. Block did not report investing-specific figures in the letter, and Cash App is a consumer money app rather than a stock-tracking product.

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)

Apple reported fiscal third quarter 2026 revenue of $109.4 billion, up 16% year over year, and diluted EPS of $2.02, up 29%, which included a $0.11 favorable impact from tariff refunds. Services net sales were $30.739 billion, compared with $27.423 billion a year earlier. The Company called it its strongest June quarter ever in its results release.

On June 4, Apple said the App Store ecosystem facilitated over $1.4 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2025 and saw over 850 million average weekly users across 175 countries and regions. Apple did not break out finance or investing apps. Its App Store announcement is relevant to this sector only because the App Store is a main way retail investing apps reach iPhone users.

Contact Information:
quotedaddy.com

Media Contact:
info@usanewsgroup.com

DISCLAIMER

Nothing in this publication should be considered personalized financial advice. We are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular financial situation, and no communication from us should be deemed personalized financial advice. Please consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decision. This is neither an offer nor a recommendation to buy or sell any security. We hold no investment licenses and are neither licensed nor qualified to provide investment advice. The content in this report or email is not provided to any individual with a view toward their individual circumstances.

This article is being distributed by USA News Group, which is wholly owned and operated by Market Equities Limited, a company incorporated under the laws of Ireland (“Market Equities”). Quote Daddy is a stock-tracking application owned and operated by Market Equities. Market Equities therefore has a direct financial interest in the promotion of Quote Daddy, which constitutes a conflict of interest as to our ability to remain objective in our communication regarding Quote Daddy. Because of this conflict, individuals are strongly encouraged not to use this publication as the basis for any investment decision. No further notice will be given, but let this disclaimer serve as notice that all material, including this article, has been reviewed and approved by Market Equities, the owner of Quote Daddy.

Neither Market Equities nor USA News Group has been paid by any company named in this article, including Interactive Brokers, Cboe, Block or Apple, for its publication.

While all information is believed to be reliable, it is not guaranteed by us to be accurate. Individuals should assume that all information contained in this publication is not trustworthy unless verified by their own independent research. Because events and circumstances frequently do not occur as expected, there will likely be differences between any predictions and actual results. Always consult a licensed investment professional before making any investment decision. Be extremely careful: investing in securities carries a high degree of risk, and you may lose some or all of your investment.

References to Interactive Brokers Group, Inc., Cboe Global Markets, Inc., Block, Inc. and Apple Inc. are provided solely as market and sector context. Those companies are not peers, competitors, or financial comparables of Quote Daddy, none of them is involved in the preparation of this article, and their results are not indicative of Quote Daddy’s prospects. Apple is referenced as an app distribution platform only. Cboe’s planned divestiture of its Canadian business is described only as it relates to quote sources listed by Quote Daddy. Market-size figures are third-party projections of market value, not addressable revenue for any company. No partnership, affiliation, or endorsement is implied.

Cautionary Note on Market Data and AI Content. Quote Daddy is not a broker-dealer, does not execute trades and provides no investment, tax or legal advice. Market data on Quote Daddy is supplied by third parties, including Finnhub, is provided for informational purposes only, may be delayed and is not guaranteed to be accurate or complete. U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs stream live during market hours, while Canadian listings are delayed, typically by 15 minutes or more. AI-generated briefings are educational only and can contain errors. Form 13F filings and congressional trade disclosures are reported on a delay of roughly 45 days and may be out of date. Return figures shown on investor profiles are rough, illustrative approximations that are not verified. Nothing in this article is an endorsement by, or indicates an affiliation with, any individual named.

Quote Daddy Disclosure. Quote Daddy is a stock-tracking application affiliated with the publisher of this article, and this reference constitutes promotion of an affiliated product. Quote Daddy is not a broker-dealer, and nothing in the application or in this article is financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Market data provided in the application is for informational purposes only and may be delayed. Any in-app commentary or briefing content is educational only. Always do your own research before making any investment decision.

This publication may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including statements about online trading platform market forecasts, the plans and results of the companies named, and the features and availability of Quote Daddy. Words such as “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “projects,” “may,” and similar expressions identify such statements. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. No obligation is undertaken to update any forward-looking statement. This document is governed by the laws of Ireland.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/online-trading-platform-market-projected-to-reach-18-18-billion-by-2031-as-mobile-becomes-the-front-door-for-retail-investors-302897636.html

SOURCE USA News Group