Future of Investing

How TD Ameritrade upgraded its research experience with crowdsourced earnings data

  • Mobile experience is approaching the power and breadth of desktop.
  • thinkorswim now incorporates more social data and charting.
close

Email a Friend

How TD Ameritrade upgraded its research experience with crowdsourced earnings data
Individual investors are being treated to an investment platform upgrade cycle that closes the gap between the tools available to them and professional investors. TD Ameritrade has rolled out a series of changes to its thinkorswim trading platform that significantly improve its earnings analysis. One big change is via its year-long partnership with Estimize, a fintech upstart that crowdsources earnings estimates from 3000 professional and amateur investors. Estimize's consensus estimates have been proven to be more accurate than comparable sell-side data sets over 74 percent of the time. thinkorswim users can now view a stock's projected range of earnings and revenues provided by the upstart. "There's been a lot of interest in crowdsourcing among our users," said Chesley Spencer, product manager in the active trader group at TD Ameritrade. "For a number of years, we've seen investor interest and discussion in our social network, myTrade. The logical next step was to start crowdsourcing." Adding more earnings analysis gives investors a single visual of historical expectations versus actual results. TD Ameritrade has also added options market metrics like historical implied volatility to give clients a view of how the options market has responded to earnings cycles. Earlier in 2016, thinkorswim incorporated LikeFolio's data that tracks social media conversations around specific products, so users can visualize trends in the frequency of social posts. This upgrade comes amid a general commitment to increase innovation at the largest online broker by trading volume. New CEO Tim Hockey committed to boosting tech spending at TD Ameritrade by 25 percent. "We were the original fintechs," he said in an interview. "Part of my task will be to literally get the organization back on our front foot when it comes to investment in cutting-edge technology." Like many other financial service firms, TD Ameritrade continues to see its users shifting their usage patterns to mobile. As customers spend more time on smaller devices, their expectations of what the mobile experience should provide has also changed. Users don't use mobile just to check stock prices anymore. They want to use mobile investing apps as full-fledged platforms -- from account openings to doing research to making trades. "It's been a rock-steady, year over year climb over the past decade," said Spencer. That's provided an interesting challenge at the product level. Historically, mobile apps were just stripped down versions of online brokers' desktop platforms that could fit on a small screen. But now, as investors want more from their mobile apps, that thinking has reversed itself to making the on-the-go experience as full-featured as possible. "All of what we've done on desktop is now available on mobile," explained Spencer. "It's not so much having two platforms, but one experience that our users access through their mobile devices and computers."  

0 comments on “How TD Ameritrade upgraded its research experience with crowdsourced earnings data”

Future of Investing

The effect of ‘money on the sidelines’ on fintech

  • As interest rates rise, money is increasingly finding its way towards safe, high yielding assets.
  • This is creating a challenge for fintechs predicated on selling or brokering riskier assets.
Zachary Miller | August 01, 2023
Future of Investing

With its core business slumping, Robinhood is eyeing credit cards

  • Last month Robinhood announced that it will be acquiring X1, a startup that offers income-based credit cards.
  • We dive into why Robinhood is expanding into credit cards and what X1 is bringing to the table.
Rabab Ahsan | July 28, 2023
Banking, Business of Fintech, Future of Investing

Closing the equity gap for underrepresented entrepreneurs: How Bank of America is driving diversity and inclusion in venture capital

  • Many small and new businesses are phasing out every year in the US. Although it can be argued that there are many reasons that may contribute to the failure of these businesses but inaccessibility to funding appears to be one of the root causes.
  • Bank of America is en route to creating a new narrative. To address these stumbling blocks and shine a light on diverse fintech founders, the Wall Street bank is devising an accelerator program called ‘Bank of America Breakthrough Lab’.
Sara Khairi | June 02, 2023
Future of Investing

Amid shifting market dynamics, how can wealth managers create value?

  • The wealth management market is going through a rough patch. Economic uncertainty and financial stress are having a negative impact on investor sentiment, shows a new EY global wealth research report.
  • As a result, clients have started to ask more questions and demand more proficiency. 
Sara Khairi | May 17, 2023
Future of Investing

Philosophical Switch: Wealthfront introduces stock investing and plans to build investing habits for the long run

  • Stock trading by small investors is on the up and up.
  • Just in time Wealthfront has launched the option to invest into individual stocks exemplifying a philosophical switch in its robo-advisor business model.
Rabab Ahsan | March 23, 2023
More Articles