YCharts Launches Corporate Events Data Feed
The self-proclaimed financial terminal of the web launched a new product that provides traders and fund managers with an exclusive data feed.
YCharts is a financial data research platform (a software-as-a-service application). The company’s latest product, YData, gives its clients access to publicly traded company events.
The goal is to better inform its users about investment strategies, YCharts said in a statement, and give information and tools that handle fee justification, time savings and upgraded presentations. To support that, YCharts made “Corporate Events” as the first available feed.
According to YCharts, it created machine-learning systems that monitor tens of thousands of event announcement sources. While monitoring, a machine-learning algorithm takes information from those sources and selects the most relevant material. A team checks the data, and if it meets the criteria it is added to the database.
YData’s feed includes webcasts, product launch events, press conferences and release dates for products like video games and movies. The feed will feature company-hosted events and conferences; industry events, shareholder meetings and board meetings; analyst and investor days; scheduled data releases; monthly retail sales results; brokerage activity metrics; earnings releases and conference calls; and special business update calls and events.
YData is available through FTP files and YCharts will soon make it obtainable through an application programming interface (an API).
Morningstar’s Best Interest Scorecard for Advisors
The independent investment research firm Morningstar has introduced a proposal system for advisors to serve clients’ best interests called the “Best Interest Scorecard.”
The tool’s features include assessments of a client’s current investment plan, possible changes a client could make within the plan and the advisor’s proposal for a new portfolio or service. It also allows advisors to factor in appreciated employer securities, the financial health of an investor or employer, or a client’s desire to work with an advisor.
The scorecard allows advisors to examine the judiciousness of their proposal and then demonstrate and document for the client whether the proposal is beneficial.
Oberweis Introduces New Small-Cap Value Fund
Oberweis Asset Management (OAM) and the Oberweis Funds launched the Oberweis Small Cap Value Fund (OBVLX). The company refers to the fund as a no-load institutional mutual fund available through fee-based investment advisors or to individual investors.
The fund focuses on academically observed market oddities and pursues investments that involve smaller value-oriented equities undergoing positive management indicators like insider buying and corporate share repurchases.
Oberweis, which is a small-cap and mid-cap specialist, ventured into small-cap value to enhance its services for small-cap behavioral finance investing. The firm has brought on board small-cap value specialists David Wetherell and Umesh Nathani to manage the strategy.
Aeris Launches Impact Management Ratings Tool
Aeris, a research consultancy, launched a rating tool to help investors evaluate mutual funds and how well a fund accomplishes its stated impact goals.
The firm’s new impact management ratings also assess a fund’s use of investment capital and how impact is measured, and informs the improvement of those strategies. The rating, which is experimental, was funded by a Ford Foundation grant.
In October, Aeris announced its first rating with Community Capital Management’s CRA Qualified Investment Fund. Aeris reported that the rating reflects the “exceptional alignment of the fund’s impact value proposition, strategies and supporting data that guide its investment program.”
Aeris has assisted the impact-investing field since 2004.
Partnership Leads To Low-Cost ETF Trading
Robust Wealth, a digital wealth management platform designed for investment advisors, partnered with independent clearing firm Apex Clearing to enhance its platform.
The new partnership allows the trading of ETFs, mutual funds and U.S. stocks as part of the platform fee. Advisors will also be able to on-board clients quickly, link accounts and have access to convenient bank transfers. Robust Wealth said this added feature is part of its latest installment, BaseCAMP suite.
Robust Wealth’s goals are to assist advisors in differentiating themselves from their competitors and minimizing costs.
Apex Clearing is a full-service clearing firm in the digital wealth space.
FS’s First Liquid Alternative Mutual Fund
FS Investments recently announced the launch of the FS Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund, its first open-end alternative mutual fund.
FS Investments is an alternative investment manager. The firm created the mutual fund to redefine core alternatives.
The fund uses a combination of hedge fund managers for outer performance and lower-cost alternative strategic beta to produce positive returns with low correlation to traditional investments.
To sub-advise the fund, FS Investments selected Wilshire Associates Inc. The firm offers financial services like portfolios, analytics, research and investment consulting globally. It has more than 500 clients in 20 countries and $1 trillion in client assets.