Traditionally, the financial services industry has rooted for and endorsed Republicans. Their support for capital gains and upper-income tax cuts has helped us personally and the financial services industry in general. But with the mismanagement of the last eight years and subsequent collapse of our nation’s economy, I’ve been wondering how many financial professionals have been reconsidering their support of the GOP.

The Financial Times just endorsed Obama for president.

They think Obama ran a better campaign, and say that “McCain’s [campaign] has often looked a shambles.” They acknowledge his “way with a crowd,” saying “Good presidents engage the country’s attention; great ones inspire.” They like his comprehensive health care reform and chastise McCain’s health care plan as “too timid.” The FT gives Obama points  for responding to the economic emergency and call’s McCain’s plan “a hasty half-baked intervention". They like his even temperament on foreign policy.

Their sole objection is not doubts about Sarah Palin’s ability to assume the presidency, as is the case with most of the other endorsement defections I’ve read. The Financial Times’ sole objection is Obama’s trade policies:

He pandered to protectionists during the primaries, and has not rowed back. He may be sincere, which is troubling. Should he win the election, a Democratic Congress will expect him to keep those trade-thumping promises. Mr. McCain has been bravely and consistently pro-trade, much to his credit.

They don’t mention taxes.

Bail-out got you down? Are you worried about the death of the free market? I’ve got something that will restore some confidence in deregulated private markets. A private US company called SpaceX just made it to orbit with a fully reusable launch vehicle that they built.

Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, has used his dot com fortune to found SpaceX, one of a few private companies who have been trying various methods to achieve orbit. I’ve been watching this segment for a few years now and even drove down to watch Spaceship One make the first privately funded manned flight to space in 2004.

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I just discovered QuantLib, which is a free open-source library for quantitative finance. Those of you who aren’t financial software developers may not realize there’s a small group of companies making financial libraries for developers of financial software. The biggest of these is TIPS, a comprehensive library used by hundreds of financial institutions, including Advent and Schwab; they charge hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus additional fees for each software sale.

What has always amazed me is that these are formulas you can find in countless finance books. So it came as no surprise that there is now an effort to create a general-purpose financial library for all companies. According to the web site, QuantLib already handles bonds, options, greeks, and numerous mathematical methods for solving things like internal rates of returns. It does Monte Carlo analysis and has pricing engines for exotic options and fixed income types. That’s as much or more as the other financial libraries I’ve looked at.

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This news is a bit dated, but it means that we hit our portfolio management acquisition trifecta. B-Ready joins the recently acquired list along with dbCAMS and Investigo.

B-Ready is an outsourcing solution that uses Schwab PortfolioCenter as the back-end. It was founded by Linda Bready (oh, I get it) in 1998.

From the press release:

The Open Finance Network is a leading provider of front and back office technology and service solutions for family offices and fee-only advisors. OFN’s end-to-end solutions empower trusted advisors to fulfill and amplify their vision by eliminating the administrative and financial friction involved in delivering best of class approaches across their business, wealth and portfolio management processes. OFN is based in Charlotte, N.C., one of the nation’s leading financial technology and services centers. The company has a full-time staff of approximately 100 people and has over $14 billion in assets under administration.

You don’t need to be a geek to appreciate it–Chrome is *fast*. Download Chrome here, then run the JavaScript Benchmark Suite.

My JavaScript Benchmark scores (bigger is better):

• Internet Explorer 8 Beta: 28
• FireFox 3.0: 144
• Chrome 1.0: 1,418

Two orders of magnitude faster than Internet Explorer. If Chrome makes it to the end of the day without crashing, I’m dropping FireFox.

Google announced today that they’re launching a web browser called Chrome. Their announcement discussed numerous features but the important ones all revolve around making the browser a more stable development platform for web applications.

There are some really good JavaScript web apps out there right now, many written by Google themselves (Gmail, Google Reader, Google Apps). Some of these web apps are very sophisticated and really push the boundaries of what browsers and JavaScript can do. But they’re all hampered by one serious limitation–today’s web browsers are not serious application platforms.

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Davis Janowski at Investment News talks about Lab49, a new company that is developing financial services software for the iPhone. The company seems to be in direct competition with Pyxis Mobile, who is also delivering financial data to mobile devices.

Lab49 isn’t targeting the individual investor, opting to target hedge funds initially.

From the article:

“[We think] fund managers, trade operations, groups and institutions that are a little less hamstrung by deployments of enterprise wide applications and issues … will gravitate to the application and the iPhone’s abilities,” Mr. Jacobs said.

“I also see demand from clearing and custodian companies which do a lot of processing and need better ways to manage work flow remotely, and are looking to monitor the status and performance of their systems,” he said.

It’s fun watching a new financial software market being created. I’m not too sure I can picture my hedge fund manager making trades from his cell phone, but it will be interesting seeing whether either of these companies get any serious penetration.

I ran across Russ Thornton’s Wealth Simplified blog several months ago and asked him if he would participate in our advisor blogger profile. The blog was brand new and he wanted to put some more miles on it first. But it has since turned into one of the best looking blogs out there.

One of the things I really like about Russ’s blog is that he puts it on the main page of his web site. Every time his clients go to his site, they’re reminded that he has a blog with constantly updating content. Which should, in turn, bring them back to his web site more often.

1. How would you describe your business and typical client?

My business delivers a comprehensive wealth management service to families.  This includes planning, investment management and coordination with a client’s other professional advisors.  My typical client has $1 million or more in investment assets and has important goals that they wish to accomplish.  Here’s my ideal client profile:  http://www.thorntonwealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/twm-ideal-client-profile.pdf

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Broadridge Financial Solutions acquired Investigo two weeks ago–I’m not sure how this one slipped under my radar. This is turning into an exciting month for portfolio management acquisitions. It really highlights the risk advisors take when they select a smaller startup vendor for technology/operations outsourcing.

A few years back, Investigo was the #1 stop for outsourcing portfolio management and reporting for advisors. I think they stumbled a bit with a botched rollout of their new version, but I haven’t heard anything new about them in the press for years. From the advisor side, I’ve heard slightly displeased rumblings but no specifics.

I know some of the Investigo crew and they’re good folks. I wish them well.

Morningstar bought dbCAMS+ maker Financial Computer Support (FCSI) yesterday, with the intention of integrating it into their Principia product line. This is an unexpected move that has me scratching my head a bit. dbCAMS is a low-end legacy product that usually isn’t even included in reviews of portfolio management systems. To be blunt, nobody took them seriously. I’ve always thought that was unfair and I’m glad to see somebody else agreed.

From Morningstar’s letter to their clients:

We have seen strong demand for integrated portfolio management solutions like this in our Web- based investment planning platform, Advisor Workstation Office Edition, and felt that offering a similar capability in our Principia suite would be a valuable enhancement.

We plan to incorporate dbCAMS+ into the Principia product line and rebrand it within the next year. By bringing these two software applications together in a single product suite, advisors will have powerful options for integrating investment data and analytics with client performance reports.

…The addition of dbCAMS+ will allow us to offer portfolio management systems, integrated with traditional Morningstar research and analytic capabilities, in both a web-based and CD-ROM software-based solution.

They’re coming out with an integrated desktop suite that they can sell in parallel to their Advisor Workstation product. I’ll bet Morningstar thinks they can clean up the dbCAMS front-end, and turn it into a viable contender in the desktop portfolio management space–a third option that people will eventually consider alongside Advent Axys/APX and Schwab Portfolio Center. I wonder if Morningstar is planning any more acquisitions to round out their desktop suite. Legacy technology aside, they may be able to buy up a low-end desktop suite on the cheap.

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