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seems like a great product for a pain that most people have. i don't seen professional investment firms or bulge bracket banks would use this, however; at citi

seems like a great product for a pain that most people have. i don't seen professional investment firms or bulge bracket banks would use this, however; at citi we use factset and capiq and even those services don't reveal everything and have errors sometimes. the analysts, at the end of the day, usually goes through the filings no matter what. like other comments posted here, professional investors, on the other hand, generally already have another service they pay for, or proprietary data/information (for hedge funds or prop shops at least) that aggregates the specific data they are looking for. not quite sure what the target audience of this is; if its investors with the intention of condensing data to just q/q and y/y operational performance, then the financial information technology space is already pretty crowded.

BrentRitterbeck 15y ago
We do a great job at locating resources. This has created a new problem: we have too much information to wade through. I would now like to see some sort of effort to structure this information. You make the comment that the financial information technology space is already pretty crowded, but I still haven't seen anything that structures all of this financial information CHEAPLY. EDIT: Hell, if I could assemble a team, I think the best way to attack this problem would be to build out the same functionality that Bloomberg provides for equities, provide it for free, and then build a retail brokerage firm around it. Give people the information to make investment decisions easily, and they will make those investment decisions. Just be there to capture the revenue generated by their trades.
- lambtron 15y ago
  thats true; i have yet to see structured financial data for cheap. although depending on the targeted audience, that 'structure' varies. equity analysts might be concerned about operational performance, top line growth, margins, and stock buyback programs. debt/credit analysts might be concerned about cash flows, revolver draws, commercial paper programs, etc. there are many niche markets and existing services out there may have already provided these structures (albeit not cheaply and they may be proprietary if at a firm). building a retail brokerage firm around structured market information i think is harder than it sounds. unless the transaction costs for each trade reflect the value-add of having a 'free' service structure financial data. currently, transaction costs reflect the quality of investment reports prepared by (usually) CFA investment professionals. i'm not sure if the free structured investment information would yield a transaction fee material enough to warrant a sustainable business model.
  - BrentRitterbeck 15y ago
    I have thought about the targeted audience portion of your comment. That is fully addressable through the use of templates. My daily work is in the interest rate risk space for a bank. As part of keeping up on the space, I read the financials of other banks. There are certain things I look for in these financials. If there was a way to create a template that was automatically populated with the information I am looking for, then that would be an improvement over the method I currently use. With that said, I'm not a computer scientist. My programming skills are limited to the more mathematical side of finance. I don't know how difficult it would be to provide such a thing given the challenges of parsing natural language. As for the pay wrapper, I will admit that operating a brokerage firm at a large enough scale and a low enough price to attract a significant portion of the market share while somehow turning a profit would certainly be a challenge; however, I am not ready to abandon this line of thinking yet.

BrentRitterbeck 15y ago

We do a great job at locating resources. This has created a new problem: we have too much information to wade through. I would now like to see some sort of effort to structure this information. You make the comment that the financial information technology space is already pretty crowded, but I still haven't seen anything that structures all of this financial information CHEAPLY. EDIT: Hell, if I could assemble a team, I think the best way to attack this problem would be to build out the same functionality that Bloomberg provides for equities, provide it for free, and then build a retail brokerage firm around it. Give people the information to make investment decisions easily, and they will make those investment decisions. Just be there to capture the revenue generated by their trades.

lambtron 15y ago
thats true; i have yet to see structured financial data for cheap. although depending on the targeted audience, that 'structure' varies. equity analysts might be concerned about operational performance, top line growth, margins, and stock buyback programs. debt/credit analysts might be concerned about cash flows, revolver draws, commercial paper programs, etc. there are many niche markets and existing services out there may have already provided these structures (albeit not cheaply and they may be proprietary if at a firm). building a retail brokerage firm around structured market information i think is harder than it sounds. unless the transaction costs for each trade reflect the value-add of having a 'free' service structure financial data. currently, transaction costs reflect the quality of investment reports prepared by (usually) CFA investment professionals. i'm not sure if the free structured investment information would yield a transaction fee material enough to warrant a sustainable business model.
- BrentRitterbeck 15y ago
  I have thought about the targeted audience portion of your comment. That is fully addressable through the use of templates. My daily work is in the interest rate risk space for a bank. As part of keeping up on the space, I read the financials of other banks. There are certain things I look for in these financials. If there was a way to create a template that was automatically populated with the information I am looking for, then that would be an improvement over the method I currently use. With that said, I'm not a computer scientist. My programming skills are limited to the more mathematical side of finance. I don't know how difficult it would be to provide such a thing given the challenges of parsing natural language. As for the pay wrapper, I will admit that operating a brokerage firm at a large enough scale and a low enough price to attract a significant portion of the market share while somehow turning a profit would certainly be a challenge; however, I am not ready to abandon this line of thinking yet.