Fintech Focus For July 12, 2021

Quote To Start The Day: “The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”

Source: Barack Obama

One Big Thing In Fintech: Robinhood customers are sitting on $25 billion of gains ($1,400 per account) and that ‘house money’ may sustain activity for some time. But when it’s gone, trading may lose its allure and Robinhood’s growth will have peaked.

Source: Net Interest

Other Key Fintech Developments:

• Stripe preparing for public listing.
• MX on WH and CFPB data effort.
• Visa crypto partnerships growing.
• Banks increase their tech spend.
• Bolt added a new funding round.
• Crypto, blockchain funding soars.
• Analysis: Top fintech pitch decks.
• Fintech marketing tips to bank on.
• Willa secures $18M in financing.
• Circle announces SPAC merger.
• Zillow execs eye mortgage fintech.
• Clearco secured $215M in round.
• Ex-NYSE exec eyes Bullish SPAC.
• The future of fintechs in SE Asia.
• Gusto plans to acquire Symmetry.
• Booking’s taking a shot at banks.
• Dorsey doubling down on crypto.

Watch Out For This: Many exchanges routinely fake their volumes to attract more coins and users, says Hunter Horsley, chief executive officer of Bitwise Asset Management, which runs crypto index funds in San Francisco.

One goal is to get listed higher up in the rankings of CoinMarketCap.com, the main site used by investors to keep tabs on global crypto prices. Coin promoters have been known to hire outfits to inflate their trading volumes on exchanges by trading back and forth between two accounts.

In a May report, Bitwise said that 95% of Bitcoin exchange trading volume listed on CoinMarketCap.com is fake or noneconomic in nature. “In crypto, the risk is crypto exchanges,” says Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer of Arca, an asset manager that invests in cryptocurrencies and other digital tokens.

Source: Bloomberg

Interesting Reads:

• Biden orders target bank business.
• Virgin Galactic celebrating launch.
• Gensler calling for better exposure.
• How sports owners can avoid taxes.
• NYC’s biometrics law taking effect.
• The State of Venture Q2’21 Report.

Market Moving Headline: Last week, U.S. stock index futures auctioned sideways to higher, only after enduring a brief liquidation alongside anxieties surrounding the spread of COVID-19 variants, as well as an evolution in monetary policy.

The liquidation, though, was not unwarranted. For weeks broad market indices, led by the Nasdaq 100, rose on narrowing breadth and tapering volumes.

Then, during the unraveling, a meaningful divergence was observed with the Nasdaq 100 trading relatively weak. This came as rates on the 10 Year T-Note rebounded after testing trend support near 1.25%.

With that, Goldman Sachs suggests “[e]xpectations of higher interest rates and higher corporate tax rates by year-end are the primary reasons [to] forecast that the S&P 500 will trade sideways during the next six months.” Supporting that view are earnings estimates, the inventory positioning of participants, as well as early July seasonality metrics.

After mid-July, the window for fundamental dynamics (e.g., a shift in preferences from saving and investing to spending, monetary tightening, seasonality, or a COVID-19 resurgence) to take over is opened.

Key Takeaways: U.S. equity index futures diverge in their attempt to discover fair prices for two-sided trade.

- Ahead: Economic data and earnings.

- SPX, RUT, DJI firm. NDX tad weaker.

In the coming sessions, participants will want to focus their attention on where the S&P 500 trades in relation to the $4,341.75 high volume area (HVNode) pivot.

Source: Physik Invest