Posted on

List of winners of top fintech conference, Finovate

Finovate has really become the go-to tech conference for fintech startups to launch themselves and new products. There really isn’t another conference dedicated to financial startups that competes with Finovate.

The show has grown from 250 attendees to over 1200 this year. Many of today’s leading Finance 2.0 startups have presented at Finovate at some time or another. I haven’t seen a connection (yet) between presenters at the show and future success (growth, M&A, etc.) but it’s still early for this industry.

Thanks to Famzoo (who presented last year) for putting together Finovate’s winners throughout the years.

Check it out below.

Posted on

Creating valuable mashups of investment research – with James Berman

Professor James Berman has taken a new investing research platform (Trefis) and made it even more valuable.

His new investment advisory newsletter, the Berman Value Folio, integrates interactive modeling tools to create what I think is one of the first mashups of next generation investment research.

James is our guest this week on Tradestreaming Radio to talk about the investment research process, the next generation of research tools (including Trefis), and how he’s created his investment product.

Listen to the FULL episode


Continue reading “Creating valuable mashups of investment research – with James Berman”

Posted on

Will the future of wealth management really be “virtual”?

I’ve been chatting with a few friends over the past couple of days about which model will prevail for wealth management in years to come.

2 sides to the argument

Essentially, there are 2 sides to the argument:

  1. virtualists: The virutalists are banking on a future where investment advisors will prospect, deliver advice, and service clients over virtual channels (Internet, phone, chat, video conference). This is a boundary-less marketing environment and doesn’t put a premium on marketing to a local clientele.  That’s a world where there’s no tennis, no kids’ bar mitzvas, and certainly, no shoulder-crying on your advisor when markets go bad.
  2. ol’ skoolers: This camp doesn’t envision a world where the delivery of financial services changes very much from what it’s been traditionally. Advisors have adopted email and websites and yes, are beginning to use social networks but ultimately, it’s a face-to-face business. You may buy diapers online but you’ll never really buy financial services online.

It might be easy to dismiss the ol’ skoolers as just that — financial dinosaurs who just can’t face the digital future of the business. We’ve got plenty of analysis like this from kasina pointing to the future and it appears to be digital: Continue reading “Will the future of wealth management really be “virtual”?”

Posted on

Using Google to forecast a stock’s reaction to earnings reports – with Darren Roulstone

Smart investors are looking at various data sets to help give them an edge with their investing. Some of this information is financial in nature — much of it isn’t.

Professor Darren Roulstone has studied how investors are using Google to search out financial information and what search volume may say about future stock prices.

Continue reading “Using Google to forecast a stock’s reaction to earnings reports – with Darren Roulstone”

Posted on

We are all Greece

I have this recurring nightmare.

Actually, I’ve got a lot of frequent bad dreams but this one’s particularly chilling. Things were O.K. at work.  I was growing my responsibilities, my authority. I was getting promoted quickly. I was making money. So, like a financial optimist, I bet on the future and started borrowing.

It started small and harmless — I took a large mortgage on a house — but then, I started borrowing more money to finance a rich lifestyle.

Soon, it was like ballooning like Bono’s ego.  I had to borrow just to pay off my old loans.

It took so much financial engineering, I didn’t even have time to work  – I was so busy.

But then, out of the blue, people didn’t want to keep lending to me.

I was coming up short, compounded by the fact my work slacked and earnings were dropping as a result.

Crap, I was stuck.

I had been Greece-d.

Continue reading “We are all Greece”

Posted on

How Michelle Obama added $5B in market cap to apparel stocks – with David Yermack

David Yermack, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, studied the first lady’s impact on apparel stocks for companies associated with outfits she wore.

The results are impressive: she added over $5B in equity value to those firms in aggregate and stocks typically went up almost 2% in the week following her appearance.

What does this have to say about celebrity endorsement of stocks and companies? I ask David about this and more on this week’s episode of Tradestreaming Radio.

Continue reading “How Michelle Obama added $5B in market cap to apparel stocks – with David Yermack”

Posted on

What are the best market indicators?

I’ve had a couple of readers write in recently asking what I think the best market indicators are.

It’s a hard question — I don’t think of them in terms of best or worst. More, there are useful indicators at different junctions in the market and really, they’re all part of an investor toolbox.

But, I wanted to ask you: what do you think are the best market indicators? What do you use to help forecast which way the market is headed?

To get the conversation started, I’ve included a list of market indicators — feel free to vote on what you like, dislike, or better, add your own.

[listly id=”pR” theme=”light” layout=”full” numbered=”yes” image=”yes” items=”all”]

Posted on

Why a stock’s ticker matters – with Vallapuzha Sandhya

future of financial services

How do investors discover what to buy? How do we find investment opportunities?

In Does Investor Attention Affect Stock Prices?, Researchers found that small cap stocks with ticker symbols similar to larger cap stocks went up in sympathy with their larger cap brothers. In fact, these attention portfolios saw 1-3% abnormal returns.

Pretty interesting, so I invited one of the authors of the study, Vallapuzha Sandhya onto Tradestreaming radio to discuss her findings with us.

Continue reading “Why a stock’s ticker matters – with Vallapuzha Sandhya”

Posted on

The cruiseline tragedy and the unexpected lesson for investors

There’s an old adage in the investment field. It’s become almost folk knowledge that you’re supposed to buy on the rumor and sell on the news.

Simply, that means that the investment gains are made before news breaks. Once the news — good or bad — makes its way into the media, most of the gains/losses have already happened.

But sometimes, when disaster strikes, there isn’t really a rumor. News hits and stocks get pummeled. Right away.

That’s what happened to the two leading cruise line stocks in the wake of the Italian disaster January 16th. Carnival Corporation (CCL), the owner of the ship, saw its stock drop like a rock, at one point losing over 20% of their value. Competitor, Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL), was also hit out of sympathy, losing as much as 8% on the day the news hit. Investors were very quick to sell, skittishly unloading their holdings before the true extent of the accident was known.

And in fact, both stocks have regained some of their initial losses.

Talking about the investment side of this tragedy is in no way meant to disrespect the innocent victims of the tragedy. Their pain is more important than these more worldly discussions. Our hearts go out to them. But, it’s also instructive to see how investors behave in the wake of news, so we can learn from it. And learn from our mistakes.

Continue reading “The cruiseline tragedy and the unexpected lesson for investors”

Posted on

3 things investors can learn about risk from the U.S. Army

Major Hugh Jones is a professor of finance and economics at the United States Military Academy and has had two tours of duty in Iraq. He also has an MBA from Duke.

He spoke last year at the CARE conference (Center for Accounting Research and Education conference) about how the U.S. Army deals with high-stakes risk. The video below is his presentation at CARE (thanks to Professor Darren Roulstone for bubbling up  his speech!).

You can get slides of Major Jones’ presentation here [.pdf].

Here’s what investors can learn from how the U.S. Army deals with risk.

Continue reading “3 things investors can learn about risk from the U.S. Army”