Fintech Focus For January 28, 2021

Quote To Start The Day: I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.

Source: Bruce Lee

One Big Thing In Fintech: StockCharts, the web's leading technical analysis and financial charting platform for online retail investors, today announced that they have eclipsed 1.6 million users on the heels of launching StockCharts Advanced Charting Platform (StockChartsACP), a groundbreaking integration with Tradier Brokerage, that offers commission-free option trading and equips investors with advanced technical charting and trading tools to analyze and execute trades.

Source: StockCharts

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• Crux taps $36M in boosting growth.
• Loanpal receives $800M in funding.
• JoomPay launching payments app.
• Stripe leading investment in Check.
• Holt awards grant to AI tech Agryo.
• BlackRock-backed robo to shutter.
• JPM hiring 400 for its new UK bank.
• BlockFi building a crypto neobank.
• TransferWise taps Visa cloud tech.
• Tradeweb adds spotting for trading.
• PNC buying Tempus Technologies.
• Charlie intros personal finance app.
• BoA, Chase, Wells screen scraping.
• Virtu adding buy-side analytics tech.
• Cathie Wood: BTC ETF still unlikely.

Watch Out For This: U.S. regulators are likely to scrutinize the quadrupling of GameStop Corp.’s shares over the past two weeks, a breathtaking buying spree turbocharged by bullish touts about the video game retailer on Reddit and other online forums.

Yet for the Securities and Exchange Commission, fighting online commentary that hypes stocks is an uphill struggle, mainly because it’s hard to prove such posts are part of an illicit scheme to manipulate the market. Rather, successful enforcement cases typically hinge on the SEC showing that investors knowingly spread false information to dupe other traders into buying or selling a stock.

Source: Al Jazeera

Interesting Reads:

• Verbal, nonverbal sales buy signals.
• Robert Downey Jr. launching a fund.
• Squarespace is planning to go public.
• Fight disruption in a disrupted world.
• Walmart is scaling fulfillment centers.
• Going Public added to cast for show.
• Melvin, Citron close out GME shorts.
• Visualizing the 2021 global economy.
• Banking from home is unsustainable.
• Deutsche probes product mis-selling.
• Blockchain to transform supply chain.
• Potato innovation becomes important.

Market Moving Headline: Fiscal and financial dominance are key risks that could be mutually reinforcing. It could become politically difficult for governments to unwind large-scale fiscal support. And raising interest rates will become more politically fraught for central banks against a backdrop of high debt levels. Even a courageous central bank may end up having to backtrack if an attempt to normalize policy were to result in a “taper tantrum” event that significantly tightened financial conditions.

Source: BlackRock