Technology, Capital Markets, Corporate Governance, Leadership, Entrepreneurship
Category: Investment Banks
Palantir (tkr: PLTR) is not a Software company no matter how hard it may try. It appears that Palantir has allocated a portion of Costs of Goods Sold to General & Administrative expenses in order to boost Gross Margins in-line with Software company Gross Margins (click here for PLTR table). Doing so helped PLTR benefit … Continue reading Palantir Is Not A Software Company
A WarnerMedia sale is not likely to happen before Q4 2021. A WarnerMedia sale is likely to occur, but not before calendar Q4 2021. The WarnerMedia business unit is a significant drag on AT&T's (tkr: T) ability to invest in its core, capital intensive, distribution/data/fiber business. Disney (tkr: DIS) is the natural buyer. Apple (tkr: … Continue reading Don’t Expect AT&T to Sell WarnerMedia In The Near-Term
Webull - the China-based fintech firm - is the latest entry in the commission-free trading space along with Robinhood, Square and Fidelity to name several. These zero commission stock trading apps have enabled the equity bubble in part. A key element of these platforms is fractional share trading which enables retail equity traders to buy … Continue reading The Free Trading Business Is Getting Crowded. Webull and Square Have an Edge.Premium
Robinhood and other Fintech firms are using Social Media-based principles and tools such as "gamification" software to drive customer growth and usage. Legacy Asset Managers are taking the M&A route. Order Flow Revenue or "Pay-to-Play Revenue" is the revenue that Asset Managers generate from directing equity and options order flow to various trade execution firms … Continue reading Two Different Approaches To Growth: Fintech vs. Legacy Asset Managers
IBM plans to spin off the Managed Infrastructure Services business within its Global Tech Services ("GTS") segment (approximately $19B TTM revenue through June 2020). Doing so will provide more air time to the acquired RedHat OpenShift (IBM's "Hybrid Cloud" strategy) and cognitive computing businesses. Post-spin, the growth in these businesses will make a greater revenue … Continue reading New IBM CEO Arvind Krishna Understands the Value of Spin-Offs
Innovation is the name of the game and I am unable to think of a major bank that has innovated or disrupted the market over the past 20-30 years. Goldman probably comes closest. Goldman's biggest "innovation" was attaching itself to Apple's coat tails. JPMorgan has leveraged AI and other advanced technologies internally. However, JPM has … Continue reading Most Banking CEOs Fail To Innovate. New Citi CEO Jane Fraser May Have Better Luck.
High Frequency Trading ("HFT") operations have purchased order flow in order to trade in front of it for years. The fact that Robinhood didn't properly disclose its practice is missing the larger issue. This practice provides HFT operations with an enormous advantage. HFT's powerful machines glimpse order flow and execute proprietary orders that benefit from … Continue reading High Frequency Trading Operations Have Traded Ahead of Order Flow For Years. The Practice Stinks.
Large Financial Institutions should acquire FinTech companies. Doing so would enable FI's to diversify beyond the depositary services business which will continue to suffer in a prolonged low interest rate environment. We won't lay out the entire FinTech ecosystem, but here are several examples. Capital Markets: FactSet (tkr: FDS) and SS&C Technologies (tkr: SSNC). FactSet … Continue reading Banks Should Acquire FinTech Companies
Intercontinental Exchange (ticker: ICE) recently announced that it agreed to acquire Ellie Mae from Thoma Bravo for approximately $11 billion. It makes sense that a large FinTech company is working to drive automation across the mortgage processing landscape. Ellie Mae will nicely augment Intercontinental's 2018 acquisition of MERSCORP. MERSCORP operates the MERS System, a national … Continue reading The Mortgage Processing Market Is A Riddle Best Solved by FinTech Companies
High Yield bond issuance has benefited greatly from the near zero interest rate environment. The Federal Reserve has played an increasingly larger role in the capital markets since 2009 with its extreme low interest rate and expansionary monetary policies. Q2'20 High Yield bond issuance of $125.4 billion was up 88% sequentially from $66.7 billion in … Continue reading The Quixotic Pursuit of Yield
