Fintech Focus For April 5, 2021

Quote To Start The Day: If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.

Source: Steve Jobs

One Big Thing In Fintech: JPMorgan issued a note Thursday that bitcoin could fetch a long-term price of $130,000 if its volatility continues to decline.

Source: Coindesk

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• Santander Consumer adds an app.
• Voyager buys MLB suite with BTC.
• JD.com’s fintech unit pulled its IPO.
• Crypto firms report upticks in retail.
• Fei Labs pools $1.3B for stablecoin.
• Goldman Sachs is looking to fintech.
• EU fintech hub shifting from banks.
• dxFeed plans to sell on-chain data.
• DriveWealth, Plaid team over tech.
• Clocktower made $25M fintech bet.
• Razer using fans for fintech growth.
• FCA is looking to limit fintech harm.
• SadaPay raises $7.2M seed round.
• Marble launches new digital wallet.
• Industries blockchain will transform.
• HighRadius raised $300M Series C.
• Chinese hydropower hub eyes DLT.

Watch Out For This: Decades before the race to build a self-driving car became a multi-billion-dollar contest between tech giants such as Tesla and Google, a South Korean professor built an autonomous vehicle and test-drove it across the country – only for his research to be consigned to the scrapheap.

Han Min-hong, now 79, successfully tested his self-driving car on the roads of Seoul in 1993 – a decade before Tesla was even founded. Two years later, it drove 300 kilometers (185 miles) from the capital to the southern port of Busan, on the most heavily-traveled expressway in South Korea.

Source: Tech Wire

Interesting Reads:

• CFTC chair joins Citadel Securities.
• Frontier IPO signals travel recovery.
• Employers unleashed hiring efforts.
• A story behind the Archegos blowup.
• Clubhouse is missing out on billions.
• Loneliness is the problem of remote.

Market Moving Headline: The S&P 500 closed above $4,000.00 for the first time.

This comes as investors shifted their focus from the risks of rapidly rising inflation to the increasing pace of COVID-19 coronavirus vaccinations and a rebound in economic activity.

At the time, the CBOE Volatility Index VIX, a measure of the stock market’s expectation of volatility based on S&P 500 SPX options, hit the lowest level since February of 2020.

Key Takeaways:

- March dips prior to bullish April.

- World GDP forecasts revised up.

- Manufacturing sentiment soars.

- Risk appetite elevated, but lower.

- Historical Perspective: Economy.

- $1.1T in student debt still paused.

- Consumers spend 40% stimulus.

- Delinquency rates are near highs.

- Financial conditions tighten up.

- Retail tempered its bullishness.

- $2T infrastructure plan unveiled.

- 1970s-like inflation very unlikely.

- Hedge funds not that levered up.

In the coming sessions, participants will want to pay attention to where the S&P 500 trades in relation to Thursday’s end-of-day spike higher.

In the best case, the S&P 500 remains above the $4,004.25 spike base.

Source: Physik Invest