(New York)

Congratulations are in order for Merrill Lynch. In what is mundane—but big—news, the firm has just introduced a paperless onboarding solution for clients. Barron’s describes it this way: “fully digitizes the procedure, allowing clients to approve new account openings through digital attestation on a computer, tablet, or cellphone. What once took a week or more can now be done in a day … That may not be its standout feature, though. COBE allows client associates to simultaneously enter information and process multiple new clients in the same household—for multiple accounts … During an online demonstration, Merrill executives showed a fictitious example of a client associate entering information for a couple who wants to open a joint brokerage account, two IRAs, a joint bank checking account, and a custodial account for their niece. Once an associate has entered as much information as he has from an earlier client conversation, he can invite the new clients to collaborate virtually on the rest. They can view the same screen and make changes to it simultaneously. During the process, the associate can click a button to perform a real-time identity check on the client to satisfy know-your-customer requirements, without asking the client to upload documents.”.

FINSUM: This sounds like the holy grail of onboarding tools. Merrill should package this up and sell it as a service to others in the industry!

(New York)

Income is both extremely desired, and very hard to achieve in today’s market. Based on the economic data which hit the morning of the 7th, it seems likely to stay that way. So where are the best places to find income? One of the first places investors think of outside of bonds is the dividend aristocrats, but the bad news is they are only yielding 1.9%. If you need more income, check out high yield bond ETFs like the SPDR Bloomberg Barclays High-Yield Bond ETF (JNK), which yields 4%. But the best bet is to look at bond closed end funds, for example the DoubleLine Income Solutions Fund run by bond legend Jeffrey Gundlach. The fund yields 7.3%.

FINSUM: Bond closed end funds are great. Many trade at a discount to their NAV and they have very nice yields.

(New York)

Tech is in a rough patch right now. The Nasdaq fell for four straight days leading into May 6th, and even on the 6th, smaller tech stocks fell sharply. All of this is spelling trouble for the recent manager-of-the-moment: Kathy Wood and ARK etfs. The fund’s flagship ARKK has lost an eye-opening 12% so far this week. The worst start to a month since it launched in 2014.

FINSUM: The fund is still up 94% over the last twelve months, but it looks like the next few months are going to be very rough for tech as investors try to digest the new rate environment.

(New York)

For anyone who has enjoyed the big rally in tech shares after the rough February through March period, JP Morgan has bad news…see the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site

(Shanghai)

Chinese companies allowed to raise funds in the US market saw those funds jump by…see the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site