What you need to know on Wall Street today
Welcome to Finance Insider, Business Insider's summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours.Bitcoin-Powered Marketplace OpenBazaar Raises New Funding
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CoinDesk, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST OB1, the startup behind the bitcoin-powered decentralized marketplace OpenBazaar, has raised new funding from investment firm DCG. |
Here's why regulators need to get serious about bitcoin
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Business Insider, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST
This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. As bitcoin's price skyrockets and popular demand increases, some of the world's largest wealth managers have started giving their clients the opportunity to invest in the digital asset. Last week, Boston-based Fidelity facilitated investor access to the asset, and on Thursday, UK-based Hargreaves Lansdown followed suit. Hargreaves Lansdown now gives clients the option to invest in an exchange traded note (ETN) that tracks the price of bitcoin. An ETN is an investment instrument typically listed on a major stock exchange that can be bought and sold similarly to a stock. As more well-known wealth firms give their clients access to bitcoin investment, interest in the asset by mainstream investors will undoubtedly rise. However, these firms also risk exposing consumers to the dangers associated with unresolved regulatory issues around bitcoin. Bitcoin still exists in a regulatory gray zone, which makes it different from most other asset classes. Mainstream asset classes include securities such as stocks or bonds and tangible assets like art. The former typically have dedicated regulators — like the SEC in the US, while investment in the latter results in the ownership of a physical product. And in both cases, investors are clear about what they're acquiring. However, in most jurisdictions, bitcoin is legally neither a security nor a tangible asset, and therefore does not fall neatly under any regulator's mandate. At the same time, most mainstream investors don't have a clear idea of the asset's nature. This ambiguity, compounded by bitcoin's relative novelty, arguably means that bitcoin investments are a special case and should be treated as such by existing financial regulators. Otherwise, it will remain unclear which regulators are responsible for consumer protections regarding the asset, putting investor capital at risk. The onus is on regulators to classify bitcoin and increase emphasis on customer education. At the moment, only a few countries' regulators are making serious attempts to establish clear legal frameworks to define and regulate bitcoin — and among those who have started, the approaches are very different. As such, regulators should start coordinating with each other to come up with an unambiguous status for the asset that clarifies under which regulators' mandates it should fall. Moreover, regulators should consider devoting the same attention to enforcing customer education among incumbent wealth managers as they have been to the marketplace lending industry. Nearly every global bank is experimenting with blockchain technology as they try to unleash the cost savings and operational efficiencies it promises to deliver. Banks are exploring the technology in a number of ways, including through partnerships with fintechs, membership in global consortia, and via the building of their own in-house solutions. Sarah Kocianski, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on blockchain in banking that outlines why and in what ways banks are exploring blockchain technology, provides details on three major banks' blockchain efforts based on in-depth interviews, and highlights other notable blockchain-based experiments underway by global banks. It also discusses the likely trends that will emerge in the technology over the next several years, and the factors that will be critical to the success of banks implementing blockchain-based solutions. Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:
In full, the report:
Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:
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The FTSE 100 briefly hit another all-time high
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Business Insider, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST LONDON — Britain's benchmark share index, the FTSE 100, hit another record high on Friday morning, coming close to breaking the 7,600 point mark for the first time in its history. In the first hour of trade, the FTSE hit 7,595 points, passing the previous intraday record of 7,587 points, set earlier this week. By the close, the FTSE was still higher, but only marginally, closing 0.04% higher at 7,546 points to miss an all-time closing high by only one point. Here is the chart:
A new all-time record comes on the same day that the latest IHS Markit and CIPS' latest PMI release for the construction sector — which measures expectations of growth — came in well above expectations. The survey showed a reading of 56 in May. That was up from a reading of 53.1 in April, and even further above the 52.7 forecast by economists prior to the release. The PMI release had little material impact on the index. "Shares are rising as part of a global cyclical turnaround and sterling weakness is increasingly less important," Neil Wilson, senior market analyst at ETX Capital said in an emailed statement. "The pound is still an important factor in the UK market in terms of overall valuations but after the correlation broke down after the referendum, there are signs it’s coming back, with the FTSE no longer simply reacting to cable; going up with the pound falls and dropping when the pound rises." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: HENRY BLODGET: Bitcoin could go to $1 million (or fall to $0) |
Precious metals miners Randgold Resources and Fresnillo were the biggest gainers on the index on Friday, both gaining around 3.8%. Elsewhere, insurer Old Mutual ticked higher by 3.1%Here’s how often IBM’s Watson agrees with doctors on the best way to treat cancer (IBM)
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Business Insider, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST
We're starting to get a better picture of how artificial intelligence could help doctors better treat cancer. And in data presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, IBM Watson Health gave a snapshot of how it's playing out so far. The studies looked at concordance rates, or how often Watson for Oncology reached the same course of treatment as the cancer doctors at different cancer centers around the world. At Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Center in India, for 112 cases of lung cancer, there was 96.4% concordance between Watson and the doctors. For 126 cases of colon cancer it was 81% of the time, and for 124 cases of rectal cancer cases were 92.7%. The concordance was in line with what IBM expected in those cases: If Watson and the docs agreed all the time, there wouldn't be much value for adding AI to the picture. But it was a bit off when it came to Watson evaluating 185 cases of gastric cancer in South Korea. There, the concordance was 49%. Norden said that relates to the guidelines for gastric cancer being different in South Korea than at Memorial Sloan Kettering, the hospital where Watson for Oncology was trained. The data presented at ASCO are among the first that IBM Watson Health has published in peer-reviewed academic journals. And while it sets the stage for what artificial intelligence can do to help doctors treat patients with cancer, many still have lingering questions. The biggest yet-to-be-answered question: Can using AI to determine cancer treatment actually extend patients' lives compared to oncologists alone determining their treatments? Andrew Norden, the deputy chief health officer at IBM Watson Health told Business Insider that the concordance data isn't "the ultimate endpoint we’re interested in," though it was the first they could get to relatively quickly. To get to studies that evaluate overall survival (that is, finding out whether using AI-powered treatment plans can increase patients' lives compared to traditional treatment plans) will take more time. SEE ALSO: A promising new cancer treatment is facing a deadly setback DON'T MISS: A healthcare firm that wants to create 'an exam room that knows you' just landed a $5 billion valuation Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: HENRY BLODGET: Bitcoin could go to $1 million (or fall to $0) |
Interoperability Boost: Ripple Sends Blockchain Transaction Across 7 Different Ledgers
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CoinDesk, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST Ripple has open-sourced a bitcoin plug-in, making the biggest cryptocurrency interoperable with other ledgers. Litecoin could be next. |
Interoperability Boost: Ripple Sends Blockchain Transaction Across 7 Different Ledgers
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CoinDesk, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST Ripple has open-sourced a bitcoin plug-in, making the biggest cryptocurrency interoperable with other ledgers. Litecoin could be next. |
Interoperability Boost: Ripple Sends Blockchain Transaction Across 7 Different Ledgers
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CoinDesk, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST Ripple has open-sourced a bitcoin plug-in, making the biggest cryptocurrency interoperable with other ledgers. Litecoin could be next. |
Oil is nosediving
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Business Insider, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST The price of oil is falling on Friday, amid concerns about oversupply. US West Texas Intermediate is down 2% to $47.07 a barrel at 12.12 a.m. BST (7.12 a.m. ET): The fall appears to be driven by fears that the US could be about to ramp up oil production, flooding the market with oil and depressing prices. Connor Campbell, a financial analyst at SpreadEx, says in an email: "Trump’s decision to remove America from the Paris climate agreement has sparked concerns that the country will ramp up its drilling, negating any output cap implemented by OPEC." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: HENRY BLODGET: Bitcoin could go to $1 million (or fall to $0) |
Brent is also down close to 2% at $49.41 a barrel:
Bitcoin's 'Segwit2x' Scaling Proposal: Miners Offer Positive Outlook
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CoinDesk, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST A proposal to boost the capacity of the bitcoin network is gaining traction. But what do miners think about what's on the table? |
Britain's construction sector is shaking off Brexit worries and has 'snapped back into action'
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Business Insider, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST
LONDON — Growth in Britain's construction sector continued to accelerate in May, enjoying "a sharp rebound in business activity," according to the data from IHS Markit out on Friday. IHS Markit and CIPS' latest PMI release for the construction sector — which measures expectations of growth — came in at 56 for the month of May. That was up from a reading of 53.1 in April, and even further above the 52.7 forecast by economists prior to the release. The purchasing managers index (PMI) figures from IHS Markit are given as a number between 0 and 100. Anything above 50 signals growth, while anything below means a contraction in activity — so the higher the number is, the better things look for the UK. "UK construction companies experienced a sharp rebound in business activity during May, helped by the fastest upturn in residential work since the end of 2015," a statement said. "The latest survey also revealed a sustained recovery in new work, following the soft patch seen during the first quarter of 2017. Increased workloads encouraged greater staff recruitment and a marked expansion of input buying across the construction sector." Here is the chart: "After years of sluggish house building, the construction sector has snapped back into action in May. Construction growth has surged to a 17 month high as the uncertainty caused by the EU referendum appears to be abating. "The unexpected recovery in construction has been felt most acutely in residential housing as builders finally feel able to respond to demand for new homes. The sector had been held back by the rising cost of raw materials but after months of tense negotiations with suppliers, input prices are starting to stabilise." Friday's numbers come 24 hours after IHS Markit's PMI data showed that the UK's manufacturing sector is still growing rapidly. The manufacturing PMI hit a level of 57.6 in May, remaining "resilient" and "sustaining most of the growth momentum gained" in a strong April for the sector. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: HENRY BLODGET: Bitcoin could go to $1 million (or fall to $0) |
Commenting on the findings, Duncan Brock, Director of Customer Relationships at CIPS, said (emphasis ours):A hedge fund veteran is trying to bring quant trading to a new market — sports betting
Business Insider, 1/1/0001 12:00 AM PST
"Well, the first time we tried to deploy it the robot fell on its face." The "robot" was a predictive analytics programme for sports betting, meant to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to crunch through huge amounts of data and find an edge in the market to bet on. Koukorinis had been working on the programme for around a year by this point. He had quit $3.3 billion hedge fund giant Fortress in late 2011 with the idea of bringing the analytical rigour of hedge funds to sports betting. Quantitative trading — also known as quant trading — had long existed in financial markets, where complex mathematical models were used to identify trading opportunities. Why wasn't there something similar in sports? "2013 was me in my living room with my wife being like what are you doing with your life?" he recalls. "You used to work in finance, we used to fly first class, and now you’re sitting here in a t-shirt in our living room with two guys, you guys are barely speaking — this is crazy. I said, no, no, there’s something here." 'This is the way to have an insight into AI for trading'Today, Koukorinis' vision is starting to pay off. Stratagem now has an office of around 30 people on Russell Square, London, which includes former Goldman Sachs quants and ex-CERN scientists. The predictive model — the robot that fell down — is up and running and bringing in money for the company. Stratagem has an internal syndicate, betting its own money and making a return. The company is also hoping to raise a fund of around £25 million by the autumn that it will invest — in effect, a sports betting hedge fund. Most of the trading will be automated.
McGarraugh spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs prior to joining Stratagem as CEO in September last year. He knew Kourkorinis through work, was an early investor in the company, and found himself increasingly drawn to what his friend was up to. "One of the reasons I was keen to stay close to Andreas was because this is the way to have an insight into AI for trading as it evolves," he says. "That’s an interesting thing in terms of the bigger picture." Kourkorinis says: "I was fortunate enough to get access to machine learning before this boom came up. I observed how people set up DeepMind [the famous London AI lab acquired by Google for £400 million in 2014], which was across the street for a while, and other AI companies." 'Think about oil in the ground. It's the same as data'Stratagem's business has two main parts: data collection and processing. At both stages, the company believes it has an edge. On the data collection front, Stratagem doesn't just rely on publically available data sources but generates its own in-house data. The company employs around 65 football analysts based all over the world covering local leagues. Kourkorinis says: "Think about oil in the ground, all of this in various locations. It’s the same thing as data. Our first job is to collect up oil and bring it to the ground. We collect Twitter feeds, crowdsource videos, market data, we collect from operators, action data we buy from various sources, tech data the analysts write — all of those sources. That’s job number one." Once the data is collected, Stratagem must crunch the numbers. Its programme can not only read different data sources but decides the correct weighting to give each source. The end goal is for the model to spot "alpha" in the market — mispriced odds where Stratagem has a better chance of winning. The programme then places bets, both before and during games. "For us, it’s really about having access to data that comes from multiple sources and of different textures and having the backbone of the overlay to be able to analyse them," Kourkorinis says. "That’s really the edge." Stratagem has built models looking at football, tennis, and basketball, and is bringing in money trading its own book. 'Whether it’s a football match or Brexit — they are akin to options trading'The idea of generating proprietary data and using technology to analyse sports betting markets isn't new. I wrote extensively last year about Starlizard, a private syndicate that does just that to generate big returns for staff and partners. Stratagem is not using its tool just for its proprietary bets but to pitch these systems to finance firms and fund managers. "It’s interesting to see how event trading is becoming more of an interest to people I’m in touch with in the hedge fund space," says Todd Johnson, the COO of betting exchange Smarkets. "All these things, in the end, are outcomes that we’re trying to take a bet on. Whether it’s a football match or whether Brexit is going to happen or you want to bet on insurance markets — they are in essence akin to options trading."
"Coming from the hedge fund world, a lot of the people in financial services and who worked in the City bet," Johnson says. "They’ve always viewed it as something that was entertainment. "As we start to get to tools that look and feel like the tools they use to trade equities, they’re starting to get that this is an interesting space to trade in." Like Stratagem, Smarkets is hoping to professionalise and financialise sports betting. It is working on a Bloomberg-style interface to help give punters more information and pitches itself as a home for sports traders. Its platform supports automated market making bots that people can set loose via APIs to trade the markets. Johnson says: "When Jason [Trost, Smarkets' founder] started the company he saw a lot of parallels between the opportunities in the betting markets and sports trading markets, and what happens generally in financial services. "If you go back to where equity markets were in the 1970s and 1980s, it wasn’t a market that people actively invested in, in terms of the average investor. The technology didn’t lend itself to having great price discovery, it was expensive to trade. All those things were adjusted in the 80s and the 90s. In the betting industry, we’re seeing that." 'Maybe we’re on the line between genius and madness'Theye are still a long way off, however."The betting market certainly doesn’t have the scale, liquidity, and the velocity that you see in traditional financial services," says Johnson. Betfair is the largest betting exchange and the total sportsbook of its parent company Paddy Power Betfair last year was £5.6 billion. That averages out at £14.4 million a day. That is simply not enough volume to interest most fund managers. Attempts in the past to set up a sports betting fund backed by traditional finance have also struggled. As the Financial Times pointed out last month, London-based Centaur Corporate's Galileo fund bet on football, racing, and tennis matches. It projected returns of 15 to 20% but lost $2.5 million and collapsed in 2012, two years after launch. People are captivated with the idea of a lot of smart guys sitting in an attic, looking at predictive analytics for sports McGarraugh says he is confident Stratagem will be able to raise the £25 million or thereabouts it is targeting. He says the fund will "not be offered widely," with the money coming from Stratagem's associates. Still, the company is hedging its bets. As well as raising the fund, Stratagem is also selling tips to punters generated by its programme and marketing its services to bookmakers to help fine tune their odds. McGarraugh says: "This process of searching for the right business model — how do you commercialise what you’ve built? I feel pretty good that we’re on the right track." The reception among bookmakers has been encouraging so far, he says. "I think people are captivated with the idea of a lot of smart guys sitting in an attic, looking at predictive analytics for sports." The former Goldman partner also believes that the tools Stratagem are developing could well stretch beyond sports betting. The core USP, he says, is "enhancing your performance but leveraging technology, using the latest AI-style technologies." That could apply to traditional finance just as much as sports betting. He adds: "Maybe we’re on the line between genius and madness, but I’m pretty sure we’re on the right side. It’s a big global market. It can be better. We want to be part of this." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: HENRY BLODGET: Bitcoin could go to $1 million (or fall to $0) |
LONDON — "A good analogy is that we’re building these robots to let them run around the floor," Andreas Koukorinis, the founder of Stratagem, told Business Insider.
"The pitch [to institutional investors] is really straightforward," says Charles McGarraugh, Stratagem's CEO. "Sports lend themselves well to this kind of predictive analytics because it’s a large number of repeated events. And it’s uncorrelated to the rest of the market. And the duration of the asset class is short — things can only diverge from fundamentals for so long because then you’re on to the next one pretty quickly."
Johnson, who left a hedge fund he cofounded to join Smarkets, believes the sports betting market will attract more sophisticated investors as the infrastructure around improves.