The Lead

Great transformations are often marked with nouns developing into verbs. Phoning. Texting. Facebooking. Tweeting. And most recently, GameStopping.

For Sander Ressler, Managing Director of Essential Edge Compliance Outsourcing, a compliance supervision consultancy for the wealth management space, the Reddit-fueled surge in GameStop’s share prices towards the end of January was a memorable time for his firm.

Direct or personalized index portfolios have been utilized by high net worth investors for over 20 years.

Remember years ago when a group called "Occupy Wall Street" set up camp on........Wall Street........and were going to "democratize" the banking industry? Remember loan decisions were going to be made by committee by wiggling their hands either up or down for approval?

Speaking recently at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Dr .Yellen commented; “I think many (cryptocurrencies) are used, at least in a transaction sense, mainly for illicit financing. And I think we really need to examine ways in which we can curtail their use, and make sure that anti-money laundering doesn't occur through those channels.” Now if you buy into that line of thinking you may be very surprised to know that the data just does not support Dr. Y's comments (and Daffy didn't win an Academy Award).

The roar of retail was amplified and crescendoed by emerging and established fintech long before it caught hedge fund managers in a short squeeze, according to a recent report from DriveWealth.

The most stunning display of misplaced culpability was witnessed on Wall Street last week. It began when a number of small investors, congregating in a Reddit chat group, started vigorously “crowdbuying” stock in public companies - most notably: GameStop ($GME) - which they believed were undervalued and possessed abnormally high and unjustifiable short interest ratios.

Bitcoin IS in the news and probably everyone knows roughly where the price is, too (the ones that don't probably DO know all Tom Brady's career statistics, though).

In the United States fintech wealth management space, it’s easy to forget about our neighbors to the north, but recent expansion in America among certain Canada-based firms are starting to get more attention.

Some use charts to predict price fluctuations. Some focus on fundamentals. Others use time machines built out of DeLoreans. Whatever mechanism you are using to forecast the price of bitcoin, make sure not to overlook the most basic analytic tool of all – psychology.