Notes From The Publisher 02/18/20

Greetings, Fellow Fintechers! 

Here’s hoping you all enjoyed the long President’s Day weekend.

We have a great lineup of content today, starting with our WealthTech Weekly column noting the week’s latest industry news from AdvisorEngine, Charles Schwab, Riskalyze and more.

We also have a new 3 Questions Q&A with the CEO Glenn Elliott of Australian wealthtech firm Practifi, which established US operations in Chicago in 2018 and just completed a successful Series B round. 

Also on our agenda this week is a piece from Financial Advisor magazine associate editor Jacqueline Sergeant on a new virtual wealth manager, 2050 Wealth Partners, that was formed to create inclusivity and economic access by two high-powered minority women.

Additionally, we look at wealthtech ChartIQ’s new Post-Trade Visualization software which helps their customers meet regulatory standards by visually mapping an order’s life cycle in one place.

In another post, we have learned that, according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, we are finaly nearing new rules around cryptocurrency and digital asset payments. 

“About damn time!” is all we can say. 
 
“Why So Many Tech Startups Misbehave” is another interesting read.  Having lived in San Francisco during the initial dotcom boom and bust, we saw tech firms misbehaving everywhere, and apparently it’s continued, despite our new “woke” generational status. That’s what too much VC money sloshing around will do to an industry, whether you’re woke or not. 

Last up is a look at a new study out of Indiana University framing the demise of human analysts in the investment industry and pointing to research that shows robots are outperforming them at every turn. Hey, we get it.  We’ve seen a lot of studies over the years– some make the case that robots underperform, others make the case that robots outperform their two-legged human friends. Either way, they’re dealing with data from the markets of past. That must be analyzed because markets may revisit cycles, but in this new post-Keynesian economic cycle, they had better have some good future predictive capabilities as well. We’ll see.

All that said, we hope you have a great week!