#FinTech Entrepreneurs*: This Clickbait is For You
Take a deep breath... Focus your attention... And then consider: How bad do you want it? As a fellow #fintech entrepreneur, the reason I pose the question is that mass disruption and disintermediation (of status quo business models and "analog" workflow processing methods) is already here, and accelerating. In fact, chances are, you are involved in developing a digitally-savvy venture - likely related to #AI or #blockchain or #bigdata or #IaaS or even #cryptocurrencies - right now. We [...]
Riffs Ep5 – What is Your Return on Technology?
In this latest Alphacution Riffs episode 5 - What is Your Return on Technology? - we detail how to measure and benchmark "return on technology" - a concept Alphacution developed that quantifies the performance of technology investments relative to the cost of those investments for specific companies - and then aggregates those measurements into a benchmarking framework for a broader sample of companies. Leveraging our model library and analysis on 60 of the largest global banks since 2005, [...]
@GoldmanSachs, @RBC: First to Put the #GFC in the Rear-view Mirror
Before we dig into the latest numbers, let's level set the motivations here because, in the helter-skelter nature of most people's day, some of this analysis tends to get brushed aside as pedestrian. There is only so much one can do to make a headcount index sexy and provocative. But, this is something folks should be paying attention to. Banks are the biggest employers, the largest providers of services, and the most voracious consumers of technology in the [...]
Aite Group Publishes Alphacution’s Asset Manager Tech Spend Study (Press Release)
< Originally published by Aite Group > According to Aite Group’s data and analytics partner, Alphacution, technical and human capital leverage benchmarks can be developed to represent a framework with numerous practical applications for all asset managers. Boston, April 25, 2018 — Understanding patterns in firms’ technology consumption offers unique insights into shifts in both business strategy and operational efficiencies. But the main challenge in discovering technology consumption for the asset management universe is that these firms are mostly private, [...]
What Does Citadel* Spend on Technology?
Take a deep breath... Focus your attention... Now, consider that there are only about five people on the face of the planet who actually know the answer to our opening question - What does Citadel spend on technology? Moreover, someone would likely need to hold one of these folks at gunpoint for that executive to spill those beans. The same scenario plays out for a firm like Millennium or DRW or Jump Trading or Two Sigma or IMC [...]
Alphacution Publishes Groundbreaking Asset Manager Technology Spending Study
Alphacution has devised a method to arrive at the most highly credible estimate for what any asset manager spends on technology, no matter their level of financial disclosure. And, the implications for that discovery are huge... Clearly, this is a bold, provocative - if not, entirely ludicrous - claim. And yet, we still make it, out here in the open, with confidence - thanks to our collection of data. Here's why: There is a persistent relationship between assets [...]
Riffs Ep 4 – What Do Hedge Fund Managers Spend on Technology?
Set aside some time to watch Alphacution Riffs Ep 4 wherein we walk through the foundational hypothesis; key highlights; an extraordinary case study involving Citadel, Millennium Management, Point72 and Vanguard (teaser); and, the strategy behind the release of our latest - and, most impactful - study to date, "The Context Machine: Estimating Asset Manager Technology Spending" (April 2018). And, for those of you with a slightly longer attention span, stick around for another "public service announcement" at the [...]
Alphacution Riffs Ep 3 – Proprietary Trading, Extreme Automation
This episode of Riffs represents a case study on proprietary trading (including market-making and high-frequency trading) - using our ongoing analysis of Virtu Financial, including its recent acquisition of KCG Holdings. Here, we begin to frame our broader research on what asset managers - including hedge funds - spend on technology as well as the migration of automation along the entire strategy spectrum. More details about the publication of Alphacution's asset manager technology spending study - "The Context [...]
Amazon, Google and the Threat of the Digital Frontier
What happens when a company is smart enough, productive enough and wealthy enough to succeed in any business? One thing's for sure: the roster of incumbents and would-be competitors threatened by that kind of company becomes an extremely long list. This is a threat like none other before because never before has a type of company been able to be so disruptive in so many places simultaneously... In unprecedented fashion, the digital era has given rise to a [...]
Alphacution Riffs Ep 2 – Measuring the Pace of Automation
Episode 2 of our new video series, Alphacution Riffs, picks up where Episode 1 left off - and begins to describe our research mission, modeling methodology and research workflow. We also begin to lay the foundation for our "T-Greeks" benchmarking framework that focuses on measuring and comparing "return on technology" (RoT) - otherwise known as "technical leverage" - for banks and asset managers. Here, we describe how much of our core research effort is currently built on the [...]
