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.”
The internet is moving away from an ad-based revenue system says Jack Conte, co-founder and CEO of Patreon, a platform that allows people to pay for access to exclusive content from digital creators. That trend is evidenced by the growth that Patreon saw in 2018, Conte said in an interview on Cheddar Wednesday, the same day the company announced it now has more than 3 million subscribers, or "patrons," with more than 100,000 creators on the platform. The company began 2018 with 2 million patrons supporting its content.
TD Ameritrade posted quarterly earnings above expectations, but Wall Street's reaction wasn't exactly enthusiastic. Still, the brokerage firm is celebrating last month's successes. President and CEO Tim Hockey talked to Cheddar about how the company navigates market volatility.
TD Ameritrade president and CEO Tim Hockey said the company feels primed to compete with younger-skewing investment products like Robinhood because it's already deep inside millennial pockets ー and more users join the platform every quarter. "In our case, we have a much more sophisticated trading platform, technology platform, education platform, and we are growing at a very happy rate, so we are quite confident in our offering," Hockey told Cheddar Wednesday.
Latch's partnership with UPS is expanding to more cities ー and applications. "The use cases are so much broader than what we would've thought," Latch CEO and co-founder Luke Schoenfelder told Cheddar Wednesday. "People are coming up with entire new businesses just using our system."
Symbiont, a smart contracts platform for institutional applications of blockchain technology, has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Nasdaq Ventures and joined by new investors Citi.
The addition of Netflix to the exclusive Motion Picture Association of America on Tuesday is likely to prompt a shift in policy, both for the movie industry and for the streaming giant.
"Netflix ($NFLX) is going to shape the MPAA's agenda as much as the reverse," Eriq Gardner, a senior editor at The Hollywood Reporter, told Cheddar.
CBD is the latest hot trend in wellness ー and Alkaline Water Company is jumping aboard with a new CBD-infused water.
"We just see that as a market we can take right onto, and glom onto," Alkaline Water Company CEO Ricky Wright told Cheddar on Tuesday. "We already have a lifestyle health product in alkaline water ー we see that as a natural extension."
Slowing economic growth may spell disaster for some businesses, but travel booking site Kayak tends to see more business when times are tough. "When we enter a recession, prices come down and so, as a result, services like Kayak get used more frequently as consumers try to find those deals," Kayak CEO Steve Hafner told Cheddar on Tuesday. The International Monetary Fund on Monday downgraded its forecast for global economic growth, sparking fears of a global slowdown. But Hafner said Kayak managed to grow through the last major recession, and he feels good about its prospects moving forward. "It was a bad one, but we grew right through it and I suspect this would be no different than that," he said.
Oracle has incorporated autonomous technology into its cloud services in an effort to boost security, but Steve Daheb, senior vice president for Oracle Cloud, said Oracle's not the only enterprise company rushing to bring emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence, blockchain, and IoT, into its applications. "We are seeing this fundamental shift, particularly within enterprise, where we are seeing this tipping point where enterprises are looking at adopting \[emerging technology\] into the mission critical applications that they are deploying to market today," Daheb told Cheddar on Tuesday.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
