“They’re less a threat to the current businesses of traditional advisors, who for the most part have happily ignored young and middle-aged investors to focus on Baby Boomers," Laura Varas, a co-founder of the research firm, said in a report. "Younger consumer preferences will have an outsized impact on financial services as firms race to respond to new trends."
All of this raises some important questions. Like, could growth in robo advisors among the fattest part of the demographics curve lead to more crowded trades and more tightly correlated markets? What are the implications for Uncle Sam from robots armed with "institutional grade tax-loss harvesting" strategies? Will the Florida conference circuit become filled with awkwardly dancing robo advisors and robo sales traders in May and June? And will they play hookie during the breakout sessions to go shoot a round of golfwith handicaps of approximately negative 40?
If we start seeing portfolios with 90 percent allocations to the Robo-Stox Global Robotics & Automation Index ETF, we'll know something went wrong.