(New York)

The supposed battle between robo advisors and human advisors has largely fizzled. Evidence indicates that robos are not stealing funds from human advisors, but are instead attracting entirely new ones, increasing the total fee pool overall. However, a new robo has just launched that should perhaps be worrisome. Discount ecommerce retailer Overstock.com, which has a very diversified base of businesses, has just launched a flat fee ($9.95 per month) robo advisor. While the platform itself should not worry advisors, the implication is that much bigger tech players, like Amazon, may soon be involved, which could dramatically change the landscape.

FINSUM: If Amazon, or any of the other huge tech companies, started robo advisors, then there could be a legitimate issue for human advisors.

(New York)

The march downward in ETFs fee has been unstoppable. Over the last few years the fee war between providers, combined with increasing AUM, has driven down fees to almost negligible levels on many of the most popular ETFs. Now, it looks like free ETFs are on the way, or even ones that pay the holder. In the next year, it seems likely that free or negative fee ETFs will debut. This is possible because providers have huge economies of scale as well as good sources of non-fee income from running the funds, such as lending the securities out.

FINSUM: It is sort of amazing that it may be economical to run free or negative fee ETFs, but it seems like an inevitable outcome to the current fee war.

(Washington)

Advisors have been waiting with their fingers crossed in the hopes that the DOL rule might be done away with, and in its place, a new SEC rule installed. Well, it looks like a positive outcome might be on the cards. The SEC and DOL have been working on a joint rule for a few months and now it appears the new more harmonious fiduciary rule will debut this fall. Now the caveat to this news is that these are estimated dates based on various procedural deadlines, such as the DOL’s delay expiring in summer 2019, but experts in the space agree.

FINSUM: We think the SEC and DOL will debut a rule this fall for comment, probably in late fall, and then try to implement everything by July 2019. Stay tuned.

(New York)

One of the Financial Times’ most respected columnists has just published an article making a grim comparison. Saying that he dreads even mentioning it, John Authers argues that the current state of markets and the context of the losses are very similar to the summer of 2007, or the eve of the Financial Crisis. In particular, just like then, stocks moved higher even as bond yields did, all until a yield threshold is broken, when stocks finally panic. Then, even though fixed income started the worries, equity investors flee into the safety of bonds. The important extension of the argument is that all the associated fallout will not occur this time, as the economy is stronger and more balanced.

FINSUM: So this is only a half comparison. The actual market event may be similar, but the condition of the economy, and its link to markets is very different, and almost inarguably better this time around.

(New York)

It seems like every time there is a big plunge in the market over the last few years one can trace the root cause back to a few products traded by people, but more often, machines. Well, it is no different this time as Bloomberg says two tiny volatility products, which now only have $135m under management, were largely responsible for the selloff. One of the products is the VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX Short-Term ETN, which will soon be delisted. Despite the small size of the products, traders closely monitor the products’ behavior, and that is said to have caused the panic, as traders predicted how the funds would rebalance and front ran that rebalancing.

FINSUM: Well, at least it was not an algorithmic disaster this time. This sounds a lot like good old fashion human gamesmanship.