Morgan Stanley is getting into the “robo-advice” business, where software manages funds instead of people. The service, Access Investing, is aimed at younger investors, and helps them put their money with the businesses they’re most interested in.
“Forty percent of our clients have chosen to invest in a theme, and the most popular ones [are] robotics and artificial intelligence,” Naureen Hassan, Chief Digital Officer for Wealth Management at Morgan Stanley, told Cheddar.
The financial firm rolled out its Access Investing division, which focuses on advising clients online, in December. Hassan says that her team has seen a lot of engagement with from people 45 and under.
Robo-advisers, or digital investment portfolios, are not very new. The field has competitors, such as Betterment or Wealthfront, that have been making strides in the sector.
But Morgan Stanley says it’s betting on its legacy to differentiate itself in the industry.
“We think it’s the Morgan Stanley investing expertise that really differentiates it,” Hassan said. “That’s why we are offering clients choice, it just isn’t only a passive portfolio, we believe in a mix of assets.”
A recent independent valuation of Tinder commissioned by parent company Match Group has placed the dating app's value at roughly $10 billion, an astounding increase from a $3 billion valuation less than two years ago that has potential ramifications for an explosive lawsuit against the company.
Elon Musk may be going to Vegas. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has recommended that The Boring Company be chosen to construct a "people mover" below the expanding convention center.
The mercurial and Twitter-obsessed Tesla ($TSLA) CEO changed his handle overnight to "Elon Tusk" with an elephant emoji, and tweeted that there would be "some Tesla news" coming at 2 p.m. on Thursday.
Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel isn't one to typically tease future products, but he did hint that Snapchat has bigger ambitions for e-commerce during a talk at a conference on Monday. Snapchat has "pretty cool products coming on the e-commerce side that we’re excited about," Spiegel said onstage at Morgan Stanley's Tech, Media, and Telecom industry conference in San Francisco.
After packing up its plans to open a new campus in New York City, is it possible Amazon will cross the river and set up shop in Newark, N.J.? That city is holding out hope that Amazon's exodus from New York doesn't mean that it's done expanding in the region. Aisha Glover, president and CEO of the Newark Alliance, told Cheddar on Tuesday that her job is to "gently nudge them and remind them that Newark is still there."
SoundCloud, the German streaming service that was on the brink of collapse before a financial rescue in 2017, is doubling down as a platform for creators with a new service that will allow artists to upload and push their content to all of the major streaming providers, including Apple, Spotify, and Amazon. SoundCloud CEO Kerry Trainor told Cheddar it's an "exciting and natural addition" to SoundCloud's value proposition as a place where artists go to distribute their music.
The fallout continues over Amazon's decision to pull out of New York City. Many housing developers scooped up property in the area in anticipation of the 25,000 new employees that would have been coming to town. So what does that mean for the future of real estate in Long Island City? Amy Plitt from Curbed NY talked to Cheddar about how it will impact everything from rents to sidewalks.
While nearly every mid- to large-sized bank rushed to announce blockchain trials and experiments three years ago — only to conclude that they couldn’t find a useful application for the emerging technology — JPMorgan Chase has found its business case: payments.
Bradley Tusk, the founder and CEO of Tusk Strategies and former campaign manager of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, knows exactly why Amazon's HQ2 plans in New York City fell apart. "It's not that we didn't get it because of some geopolitical economic trend or something out of our control. We didn't get it because our own politicians and Amazon themselves were too incompetent and too arrogant and too tone deaf to get it right," Tusk told Cheddar.
Amazon's blog post announcing it will pull the plug on its New York City headquarters is nothing but a bluff to bring politicians back to the negotiating table, said D.A. Davidson Analyst Tom Forte. "Absolutely Amazon's bluffing," Forte told Cheddar Friday.
