"Until the start of 2017, banks, brokerage houses and brokerages could legally pay financial professionals with money that does not come from end-users. In most cases, they earned money by providing financial analysis, research and technical advice. Starting this year, they are forced to pay these professionals with a financial product. This could prove financially burdensome to brokerages, particularly those earning commissions from transactions. Some brokerage firms that do not offer financial products are already reporting losses. Ponzi Scheme Over the past ten years, cryptocurrency has become a hot commodity, prompting a tremendous growth in crypto-related investments. Some investment schemes promise huge profits to investors. They claim that they can return 40% profit in"

"The Canadian economy lost 87,000 private sector jobs last month, according to a joint analysis by Thomson Reuters and the Bank of Canada. It was the fifth consecutive month of declines, marking the longest run of declines in employment since the financial crisis in 2008. The first two months of the year also saw the introduction of Ontario's so-called fair employment plan and some economists have predicted the number of jobs lost will reach 150,000 this year. ""It looks as though we'll get to 150,000 lost jobs this year,"" said Thomson Reuters chief economist David Tulloch. ""From there, it looks like job losses will ease somewhat over the next few months."" Analysts expect employment to start climbing back once the weather improves. According to Statistics Canada, employment"

"A small company that sells software to automate finance work posted a 49% increase in revenues in 2011 to $135 million, earning a profit of $5 million in the process. After a tough first quarter in which sales dipped by 26%, MaxPoint posted stronger numbers in the remaining three quarters of the year, growing revenue by 17% to $142 million and reporting a net profit of $4.6 million. The company grew from 108 employees in 2010 to 160 employees last year, with the majority of new hires in software and development. With those employees earning an average of $60,000, the company has earned a total profit of $17 million in the past five years. ""We are continuing to ramp up our technology while expanding our product and client services capabilities,"" CEO John Hirschmann said in a""

"Think about the impact of all the finance work you’ve already completed and thought about the expense of the marketing your books will receive. Think about how many marketing dollars you’re planning to invest in the next few years. You won’t be earning nearly as much in the long run as you think. What do you need to do to improve your own marketing strategy? You’re doing enough, but you need to change your approach. Many authors say they’re so busy they can’t do anything. They’re already doing their best – there’s no need to do more. The truth is, most writers are doing too much. Everyone is busy, but we don’t all have the kind of expertise needed to make a big difference. If you’re doing your own research, your best marketing strategy is to offer useful suggestions to"

"Employers who can offer analysis and support from both employers and students will be at a distinct advantage in the competitive business landscape, says Sarah Dalton, research fellow at the Australian Centre for Independent Economic Research. ""The chief executive of a small business already earns an average wage around the $120,000 mark,"" Ms Dalton says. ""In order to make the leap and be able to pay a starting salary around $120,000 with benefit packages at the same time is a very special business opportunity."" Payscale.com estimates the starting pay for finance professionals in Australia as just under $103,000. It is a good deal more than the annual average of about $74,000 reported by a 2013 survey by the Australian Chamber""

"Lombardi took over in March 2006, having served as a consultant for the NHL since 2005, and he soon got to work on an analytical approach to explain the sport that was different from his predecessor's. Lombardi went after the analytical angle early, hiring Roger Craig as the NHL's new senior vice president of finance and business development, who served in that role until 2010. He brought in Paul Hicks, previously with the Arizona Cardinals and Patriots, as his senior vice president of analytics and research. Lombardi earned his first playoff-winning game as a coach in November 2010. Team president John MacLean, who had been Lombardi's assistant coach on the New Jersey Devils in the 1980s, remains with the organization as an"

"In an interview with ProMarket, Casey Mulligan, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, said: “It’s a problem of finance, and as such it’s a problem for finance.” Mulligan described banks as having “pretty decent analytics teams” and added that he believed financial companies could do more, such as putting much more emphasis on improving financial research. He cited the recent research paper by Thierry Bianchet and Michel De Luca, “Earnings Mispricing: Understanding the Sources and Limits of Financial Services Accounting Earnings-Mispricing”, that concludes that finance firms engage in statistically significant profit-mispricing and that, to quote from its abstract, “the broadest measure of mispricing produces an excess of earnings over fundamentals.” Mulligan went on to explain how analysts and investors often can earn additional profits by using such techniques, citing a National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Graham Cramer and Natalia Zubarevich, “Exhibit 1.1”, which notes that research coverage of financial firms leads to high earnings surprises, in terms of both the share price of those firms and earnings. With the financial sector having seen a renewed push for greater regulation after the crisis, critics argue that overly aggressive financial analysts may in fact have contributed to that crisis. A typical example, Mulligan suggested, was when Lehman Brothers mistakenly reported it earned $4.6 billion in pre-tax earnings in March 2008, when the company actually made a loss of $13.8 billion. How much investors earn by being able to put more emphasis on financial research is often debated, and the extent to which that applies to Wall Street firms, which tend to have large research budgets, is unclear. However, in one study, analysts earned more by being “detailed”, even if they lacked any special knowledge. In another study, analysts earned more by being “excellent”, regardless of whether they actually knew anything special about a company. What is clear is that many analysts are paid large sums of money for producing largely theoretical analyses of companies in the hope of driving up the share price. As Mulligan noted, “more profits over finance’s conventional earnings is a problem for finance, and as such it’s a problem for finance.” By Dan Klein Follow @dan_klein Subscribe to the ProMarket Blog via email and receive daily updates on the latest economic news. Copyright 2014, ProMarket.com."

"The MBA opens more doors than you might realize. According to a recent study from Robert Cain at Cornerstone Business Consulting, who asked 167 MBA candidates to rank how important they thought the job was, 93% thought that the MBA was important in earning an income, making a business case, and doing "analytical research." Yet, less than half of the candidates cited earning a business degree as a core part of the MBA curriculum. And only 31% said that earning a business degree was of vital importance to earning an analytical analytical business graduate degree. Perhaps the low earning results from graduate degree holders demonstrate that the complexity of graduate degrees becomes obvious only when the outcome of completing the graduate degree is often not in direct correlation to the initial investment. Although the faculty at a"

"The most recent data available is from 2013, and was released in December. It showed that average payment rates for new graduates were 27.3 percent in 2014, down from 32.5 percent the year before and nearly 60 percent in 2002. The data show that payments to new graduates, though still lower than in 2002, have risen substantially over the last decade. For new graduates, annual payouts ranged between $6,600 and $19,200 in 2009, and between $4,200 and $17,400 in 2012. Why is the outlook so bleak for new graduates? Economists at New York University have suggested it is a combination of the declining salaries for new college grads, stagnant demand for workers with analytical skills, and the lack of career opportunities. The pay of"

"It's been about a month since I joined Triscripts. Since then, I have worked on designing an analytic software application in my spare time. I'm more than eager to share with everyone the code of a new program we are developing. Why do we want to study AI? The first question we had to ask ourselves was ""Why do we want to work on AI?"" It's true that AI is undoubtedly the subject that will have the largest impact on humanity. After all, AI will transform the world more than the internet, cell phones and the internet combined. But it's more than that. We want to study AI because we want to have a part in the process of transforming our societies. The tools of AI It's important to know that AI is not something that you will""

"Finance companies in particular, though, are watching markets with keen interest. While valuations have fallen across the financial services sector in recent months, it is a sector that is likely to offer the most opportunities when economic growth becomes more firmly established, and with it rising profitability. Even with volatility in both equities and bonds, investors are increasingly looking to invest in financial firms for the potential of stronger growth ahead. While investment banking and trading has delivered headline profits to banks this year, the biggest financial firms have been able to generate significant revenues in research and analytics. Data analytics firms are now the biggest contributor to investment banks’ top line, with a combined quarterly revenue of $2.7"

"According to an analysis of 37 finance and accounting firms by CreditcardBusiness, pay is rising for junior analysts and vice presidents. Compared with the last survey of finance leaders in July 2013, earning as much as $199,000 increased, with senior managers earning roughly $280,000. The survey also showed that pay for executives is up to $245,000. CreditcardBusiness reports that, of those surveyed, 85 percent are planning to invest in analytics and 89 percent will emphasize analytic skills over analytical skills. Nearly 70 percent said the strength of their analytic department will be the most important factor in selecting an organization in the next two years. Senior vice presidents earned the highest median pay: $249,000, while analysts averaged $121,000. Read More"

"With quarterly earnings season in full swing, analysts have already started pondering the potential impact of emerging trends such as automation and digitalization on existing financial services products. In a report published Tuesday, Goldman Sachs analysts Andrew J. Hendler and Michael Kim estimate that in about a decade, automated bank loans, investments and wealth management could generate $280 billion in annual profit. In a note to clients, the analysts say “digitalization” could result in “substantial reductions” in “delinquencies, overpayments, and other” problematic features of financial products. “In finance, the large volumes and high-velocity of transactions enable the discovery and categorization of mismatches, which generate high profits. These discoveries and categorizations, however, also depend on the data processing capability of the financial institutions and, ultimately, their human employees. As digitalization rapidly expands the volume and velocity of transactions, the financial institutions must shift from ‘manual analysis’ to ‘analytic optimization’ of portfolio optimization and loan origination,” they wrote. Based on the profitability results from a hypothetical “financial framework” of the future, the analysts estimate that the analytics program could result in annual revenues of $276.5 billion. This would represent “an increase of 162% from revenues in 2016,” they added. To gain an understanding of the potential impact of such large scale changes, Goldman Sachs developed an analytics framework to model the financial services products that would be likely to be impacted by digitalization. The company analyzed anonymized transaction data from a Goldman Sachs retail wealth management customer account and compared the analytics with commercial banks. The top category of financial products that are expected to be impacted by digitalization are loans. These products currently generate the highest profits in Goldman Sachs’ retail wealth management business. Analysts argue that, in part, this is because loan origination is currently driven by customer monitoring of historical credit applications. With the increasing automation of digitalization, the analysts say loans will likely “inevitably” be generated more dynamically. “Expect loan originations, customer monitoring and the lending process to be aggregated and run more efficiently. This will then lead to smaller loan sizes and higher-margin loans. Further, to maintain high margins, the automated systems and decisions will be focused on the average size of loans, which could eventually be smaller. As loans get smaller, the average amount of profit generated per loan will grow to reflect the value of more assets,” they wrote. Analytics tools that generate more loans would be less likely to generate losses because “it’s hard to make losses on a smaller loan size,” Goldman Sachs said. For wealth management products. The brokerage said it thinks “the"

"Back in the 1990s, it was a booming business to make profits from commodities. To be sure, people earned a good living, and many commodities were purchased at moderate prices. Unfortunately, the commodities business is not the high-profit environment it was in the 1990s and early 2000s. Today, commodity firms are struggling to earn profits because of plunging commodity prices, both of the commodities themselves and the commodities derivatives used to trade them. Banks traditionally made money from finance and trading in derivatives. In recent years, both businesses were severely challenged by the slowdown in the economy. If trading in financial markets was challenging, it is also challenging to generate profits by making money off commodities and agriculture products. Last year,"

"The following real-world insight was first published by Adam Grant in Forbes on May 10, 2014: In a recent seminar I attended, an aspiring entrepreneur—who worked as a financial analyst for one of the big Wall Street investment banks—discussed the issues facing his firm and predicted the demise of this entire industry. This financial analyst worried about a fundamental contradiction at the heart of capitalism—the discipline that advocates that greed is good may prove that greed is not good. While profit was a measure of earning power, doing so required something completely selfish—pushing down risks and earning more profits. After all, if risk doesn’t actually make a profit, it can’t be good. The implications of this conflict were staggering. First, what made his job"