NYC's FinTech Innovation Lab

Applications are open for New York’s seventh annual FinTech Innovation Lab, a 12-week program that I have blogged about a bunch here on AVC. This proram is for early and growth stage companies that have developed cutting edge technology products targeted at financial services customers. The program has a particular interest in: Augmented/ Virtual Reality; Data Analytics using Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning; Digital Customer Engagement Tools; Enterprise Dev Ops; RegTech; Security, and other Disruptive Financial Services Models.  For a complete list of focus areas, click here.

The FinTech Innovation Lab is run by the Partnership Fund for New York City and Accenture. Accepted companies will get the chance to refine and beta test their financial technology products in New York City in partnership with the world’s leading financial services firms and receive mentorship from the Lab’s Entrepreneurs Network.

Through a competitive process, the chief technology officers of the participating firms will determine which proposals are accepted for further development and deployment. The participating firms are:  AIG, Alliance Bernstein, Ally Financial, Amalgamated Bank, American Express, AQR, Bank of America, Barclays Capital, BBVA, BlackRock,  Capital One, CIT Group, Citi, Credit Suisse, DE Shaw, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, Guardian Life Insurance, JPMorgan Chase & Co., KeyBank, MasterCard, Morgan Stanley, New York Life Insurance, Pitney Bowes, Rabobank, Scotiabank, Synchrony, UBS and Wells Fargo.  Several venture firms also support the Lab, including Bain Capital Ventures, Canaan Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Nyca Partners, Rho Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Warburg Pincus.

For more information sign up for their information session on Monday, November 7, 2016 from 5:30 – 6:30 PMRegister

Application deadline is December 1, 2016APPLY

#NYC#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. JLM

    .Programs like this — collaboration amongst industry, disrupters, financial muscle, VC — are exactly what should be happening in this country to create progress, tech advantage, and jobs.It is also great for NYC.It is one of the few programs in which using the public purse to spawn it is justified. To make it really justifiable there has to be a date by which it should be weaned from the public funding.Well played.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    1. William Mougayar

      I didn’t see that public funds were being used here. It’s a public-private “partnership”. It appears that private companies are mostly financing this program.You’re being generous in saying that it is justified. Where is the evidence of payback? It just lets big banks dip a toe in the startup ecosystem, and that keeps them busy.

      1. JLM

        .I have no personal knowledge but Fred does say it’s being run by the Partnership Fund for NYC — public funds and sponsorship, no?Part of the payback is the simple reality of the cooperation amongst the disparate parties.This is like when ATX attracted MCC (Microelectronics and Computer Technology Company) and SemaTech which coupled with the JJ Jake Pickle (University of Texas) Research effort resulted in Austin’s tech blossoming.That was a huge public-private-intelligence community coop which worked like a champ.The big banks may be playing defense. They want to know what might disrupt them before it disrupts them. There is a lot of that going on. Companies like USAA have venture operations which have invested in blockchain enterprises to keep an eye on the developing technology.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. Mac

          Welcome to corporate espionage in the age of FinTech.

          1. JLM

            .Haha, at least it’s our guys, no?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          2. Mac

            At least.

        2. William Mougayar

          “keep an eye”…yeah, I see a lot of that going on. But insights don’t come from watching. This isn’t a spectator sport.

          1. JLM

            .A lot of spectators come out of the stands and buy the teams on the field, no?Everyone is looking for an exit and they’d like it to be next to the paywindow, no?Most of the money gets made by being either 80% right and done on time or by buying the best of anything.This is no different.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          2. William Mougayar

            I’m very jaded about big companies meddling with startups during their formation stages. Big companies should either innovate themselves, or buy companies outright. Anything else is just a waste of money. Big companies should have sandboxes to try out many new products. That can educate them more than just being at the table of an accelerator via a middle manager who wished they were the startup, and knows they need to move mountains inside to make things happen.I am too close to these situations, and have seen how big co’s dance with small co’s. They can’t. They keep tripping on them, and the tempo is out of sync.

          3. JLM

            .I don’t think we are disagreeing when it comes to the involvement between big companies and startups.I am suggesting that big companies are going to be the buyers of the SUCCESSFUL startups.Middle management in big companies is not entrepreneurial by any measure.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          4. awaldstein

            So what are we talking about?FinTech or the enterprise?I know the later well and simply don’t agree.There’s a ton of issues, but the opportunities for startups making products or even platforms for the enterprise to adopt, use or buy in the IoT and mobility space I think is significant.I’m not usually wrong more than 50% of the time

          5. William Mougayar

            50% aha!! That used to be my Dad’s (OB/GYN) joking answer to his patients when they would ask: Is it a girl or a boy?

        3. LE

          by the Partnership Fund for NYC — public funds and sponsorship, no?If you follow the links you will see that there is no public money involved this is totally private. It’s part of the naming game similar to when industry gets together and doesn’t blast “for profit” all over their intentions with what they call themselves. You’ve seen this in Washington millions of times. [1]http://pfnyc.org/our-organi…For added impact they are using a .org name so it appears further that it’s a non-profit. Which technically it is but defacto it’s not. In a way it’s a bit deceptive just like the Clinton Foundation. (That’s a joke, I don’t think there is anything deceptive about the Partnership Fund for NYC).[1] It worked and it apparently had the desired impact, eh?

          1. JLM

            .I stand corrected. Thanks.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  2. William Mougayar

    It’s good to see financial services institutions cozy up to FinTech of course, but I tease them that all of this is just A for effort, and a much lower grade for results. FinTech is supposed to disrupt Financial Services, not support incumbents. https://uploads.disquscdn.c… Not picking on this program in particular, but it’s hard to get innovation by symbiosis.If you need to go outside to bring innovation inside, then that tells you that you can’t really innovate. And big companies think of innovation in different ways than startups. Startups are just different animals, and they usually don’t survive very well the domestication test inside large companies.This is what happens, typically (see cartoon). So, I urge big companies to do a better job working with startups.

    1. JLM

      .Big companies are not stupid. They read the same stuff that everyone else does. They recognize they may not be nimble enough to compete/innovate in this arena.What they have is a big balance sheet and access to capital which allows them to take a little bit of a “wait and see” attitude toward things with an eye toward simply buying the winners when the game is called.WalMart went from a standing start to being the biggest grocer in the US in a short period of time, essentially outmuscling their competition with their balance sheet and ability to build enormous facilities with no sweat.They are now doing the same thing in the Amazon etailer space having hired hundreds of software engineers to propel them forward.If the blockchain takes off, I fully expect big financial companies to simply buy the capabilities they want. There is nobody developing a startup today who is NOT thinking about an exit. Not to say that is their primary focus but they are certainly thinking — “How do I monetize this puppy?”Companies like USAA, which has a chaotic venture operation which is self-funding, are nibbling at the edges of promising FinTech startups because they see themselves using that tech if it actually works.USAA is run by a bunch of retired Air Force generals, for goodness sake.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      1. William Mougayar

        Again, I feel you are giving too much credit to large companies, as the ending point. When was the last time a big financial company bought a large successful FinTech startup? FinTech startups that succeed end-up growing on their own, e.g. PayPal, Venmo, Lemonade, Betterment, Transferwise, AliPay, Wealthfront, Lending Club etc.If the blockchain takes off, I fully expect it will create new giants of the likes of Amazon, eBay or Yahoo. And yes, there will be some acquisitions by large companies too, but they will not be the headliners.

        1. JLM

          .You’re kidding, right?PayPal was started in 1998.PayPal went public in 2002.It was acquired by eBay for $1.5B in 2002.eBay acquired it because its own homegrown payment system, eBay Billpoint Systems, was terrible.It was a classic acquisition of tech and talent.eBay then incorporated PayPal into its platform, thereby imbedding the tech.It then spun Pay Pal out as an independent company on 18 July 2014.On 20 July 2014, the new Pay Pal did an IPO (secondary, I guess) which valued the company at $46.6B. <<< nice lick for eBay, no?This transaction is typical of a big company buying a startup, incorporating the tech, turning it into a valuable asset, and monetizing it while maintaining the tech.It completely proves my argument.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          1. kidmercury

            def siding with JLM in this beef.also, JPM has invested in motif investing and square, among a bazillion other fintech things. hardly asleep at the wheel.also, intuit buying mint.

          2. William Mougayar

            But, for the banks, today, PayPal looks like a startup that is eating their lunch in the payment side. It’s a vexing situation. Same for Apple Pay btw. But Apple is one of the few big companies that innovates well and knows how to enter new markets that are adjacent to their core offering.

          3. JLM

            .PayPal is the real deal. The banks need to get a new set of specs.PayPal annual revenue is over $9B while Visa is at $14B. [Visa just bought Visa Europe and that will add about $2.5B to revenue.]PayPal is not a fledgling startup.PayPal has to figure out how it can nibble into the credit side of payments without double fees.Today, when I use PayPal — tied to a credit card — it is a fee on a fee.For this reason, Visa/AmEx will continue to be more attractive as they are impulse-buying, credit-supplying payment schemes.But, the race is well underway.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          4. William Mougayar

            Right. I don’t like PayPal’s fees either. It’s highway robbery, but their trump card is convenience. AliPay in China is double the size of PayPal with 350 Million registered users.

          5. JLM

            .Everything I hear about China surprises me. I am surprised to hear of that many customers and I was surprised to see how easily they spanked Uber.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          6. Lawrence Brass

            I feel the same, it sometimes makes me think that western democracy is overrated.

          7. JLM

            .When you were a Communist country and begin to leave Communism behind, you have no bad capitalistic habits and everything is new and possible.Cuba will be a huge opportunity when Fidel dies. Cubans are hard workers. I may move there.E Germany was a bad deal because the people were used to being controlled by the state.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          8. sigmaalgebra

            Western Democracy “Is the worst form of government there is except for all the other forms that have been tried.”

          9. jason wright

            Over sold by its beneficiaries

          10. sigmaalgebra

            My view is that around the world Uber is highly vulnerable to serious spankings from local interests. More generally, Uber is using a short stick to poke a really big legal hornets nest. Uber will get badly stung.If using a smartphone to call a cab is really very desirable, then there is nothing, zip, zilch, and zero, to keep others from borrowing that.For international travelers who want to use a respected cab brand in a new city, okay, there will be some good brands, brand reviews, etc. Gee, high end restaurants can be successful with international travelers without being one brand around the world.Nothing will save Uber. Uber just doesn’t have any advantage worth their overhead, their cut, and their legal problems.,

          11. JLM

            .Uber is not going to win many legal confrontations.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          12. LE

            Being able to buy the best legal minds creates a lot of political connections and energy and creativity to get the client off the hook. Worked for OJ. Worked for Clintons. No?In that light it’s actually surprising that Cuomo did what he did with Airbnb in NY state.I think the mistake that Uber/Airbnb made is that they were a bit to arrogant and in your face and to successful. If they had been less on the map (not saying it’s even possible just speculating on monday morning) they could have fortified before the other side was able to mount a campaign against them.

          13. JLM

            .The Uber experience in ATX was good until they didn’t want their drivers to have fingerprint background inspections and they didn’t want to pay any taxes.A normal cab driver has to submit to fingerprint background inspection.Then, they spent $10MM to try to win a referendum vote — which they lost in part because of the heavy handedness of their campaign.They are very arrogant.They operated illegally for 6 months before they even began to negotiate in good faith with the city.That doesn’t work too well in Texas.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          14. LE

            Uber has the advantage of having shelf space on your smartphone. By critical mass at this point. [1]That’s a pretty big advantage. I am not taking a side either way but simply pointing out that you can’t trivialize getting your bread on the shelf at the supermarket since “anyone can bake a loaf of organic bread and lease a delivery truck”.[1] Taking your side of this of course “live by the sword, die by the sword” sure someone else could steal that space.

          15. Lawrence Brass

            The genius part is the spun out. How many tech or IP acquisitions end like that? Not many IMO.

          16. JLM

            .Yet.Look at the Blackstone model.Buy it with a lot of OPM. Grow it. Sell part of it. Hold part of it. Let the new owners (industry savvy) grow it some more.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          17. sigmaalgebra

            So, THAT’S what they are doing.

          18. LE

            This transaction is typical of a big company buying a startup, incorporating the tech, turning it into a valuable asset, and monetizing it while maintaining the tech.Staying with my political theme (we can use the Kennedys here) I’d say that they often screw up and ignore any potential future benefit from a business that they acquired. There are many examples of this with Google, one is ignoring and letting slowly die google voice.[1] Now we read that they are backing off from google fiber, not an acquisition, but really shows how quickly they are willing to ignore the retarded Kennedy child that can’t get into Harvard. Just put it on what in medicine is called comfort care at the hospice.http://www.nytimes.com/2016…Of course the people at google never had the seat of the pants feel for how difficult it is to tear streets up with a ditch witch.

          19. Salt Shaker

            Agree. Fin institutions can afford to take a “wait and see” attitude but they’re also plodders and hardly nimble, forward-thinkIng companies. Some are closer to regressive than progressive. In the consumer banking industry, for example, either Visa or MC should have acquired PayPal and/or Venmo. One of the probs is that Visa and MC are essentially trade orgs owned by member banks that are legacy driven. They’re neither fully private or public. Not suggesting they’re asleep at the wheel, but cultural and biz impediments may make it challenging to move their biz model forward and take advantage of modern-day needs and opportunities. Short-term there’s no legit threat, sans Paypal, but that’s perhaps the time to be selectively more proactive. Maybe it’s just too early in the curve.

          20. JLM

            .You bring up a good point. They are plodders.Amex is stuck on gross revenue and net income for the last five years.I think Citi or Wells Fargo might get in the game.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        2. jason wright

          How does a tech behemoth acquire a blocktech company incorporated as a foundation, in Zug, or as a gGmbH et.c.?

        3. Adam Sher

          My sample size is small but I noticed many successful new comers are backed by industry stalwarts. Blackstone, Avalon Bay, Toll Brothers, and Fidelity have backed FinTech companies.

        4. Susan Rubinsky

          What are everyone’s thoughts about Stripe – https://stripe.com/

          1. Lawrence Brass

            Their API and analytics looks good. Same pricing as braintree at 2.9% + 0.3 USD per transaction. Braintree offers no charge for the first 50K.Implement stubs for both and you are in a perfect world.

          2. Mac

            Thanks for bringing them up, Susan. Never really looked at their products. After a quick glance, not certain of their unique value-proposition. When I look at the Shopify payments model, I think of enabling merchants to accept credit card payments without requiring a third party payment gateway. Is Stripe one of several companies that have developed api’s that integrate with the Shopify platform?

          3. Susan Rubinsky

            Truthfully, I brought it up because I will be utilizing it for a client implementation with their existing SquareSpace account/website. I have been rather impressed by how simple Stripe has made the implementation process. And it’s far more elegant than PayPal. It really does put the power into the hands of the everyday person.

          4. Mac

            Nice testimony. They should pay you to write copy. I am going to spend more time familiarizing myself with their products. Thanks for bringing it up. JLM and William are battling it out over PayPal above. You should jump in and comment. 🙂

          5. Susan Rubinsky

            I saw the battle. Didn’t want to participate. I do a lot of observing here on AVC.

        5. awaldstein

          My gut puts me on the different side of your argument.You see blockchain as a runway and platform driving its own business models and a go big or go home economy for innovation.i believe and hope you are wrong.If the only win is go big, then this will be a hugely casualty laden battleground.I have more faith in the enterprise than you do.With @JLM:disqus 100% on this one.

          1. William Mougayar

            No, it’s 2 different approaches, both valid. My point is that enterprise implementations may not create spectacular startups. It’s just about technology implementations, and the existing IT Services companies are all over it.I wrote this recently,- basically blockchains are going into 2 different segments:1/ to create new models, and disrupt2/ to support existing models, and strengthenboth are valid, and both have (different) benefits. Here: http://startupmanagement.or

          2. awaldstein

            You are becoming an expert of playing both sides.

          3. William Mougayar

            Intentionally.

          4. awaldstein

            I consider this an unfortunate choice.

        6. PhilipSugar

          See my comment above.

      2. LE

        Big companies are not stupid.Big companies are kind of like the Clintons. Can be brilliant and calculating in some aspects of life when so motivated, but incredibly stupid, reckless and risk taking in other areas.

      3. PhilipSugar

        You know I have sold three small companies to three huge companies.I always say I can screw up three times and get it right before BigCo can make a decision.A BigCo exec who I sat on the board of a small company with then told me yes that’s great Wharton Boy. But if we screw things up once we lose Billions of Dollars you just go in another direction. Firing somebody for screwing up a decision is not enough of a punishment.He was the head of all East Coast Walmarts, was in charge of Sam’s Club’s and who told me in 1999 that Walmart would have 30% of all grocery business by the next decade. I laughed. I was wrong.

        1. JLM

          .Their performance in groceries is incredible. You go to a little town like Marble Falls, Texas and they have a combined WalMart Superstore and a Grocery. Wow!JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          1. PhilipSugar

            I consider myself one of the most flyover state people on this board.He asked me if I had ever been into a Walmart the answer was no.He absolutely hecked me.I have seen their supply chain operation. The Army might be good, but they not better, they are best.In 1999 he could see the minute sales by individual store of individual product and track what happened if he moved an end-cap. Wireless. 1999They would move pop-tarts, water, and batteries to the end cap during a storm.

  3. jason wright

    The art of seduction.

  4. pointsnfigures

    The fundamental backbone of financial services is going to look radically different in 5-10 years.

    1. William Mougayar

      I hope so.

      1. pointsnfigures

        It will have blockchain in some places, but there are other places that will fundamentally change that have nothing to do with blockchain. I remember back in 1996, we saw it. It happened in 2001-2005. Now, it’s going to happen again in a different way.

    2. LE

      What is your opinion of the even more extreme move away from individual stock picking and increased use (even for pension funds) of index funds?[1]And the consolidation going on in the brokerage business. [2]Investors are giving up on stock picking. Pension funds, endowments, 401(k) retirement plans and retail investors are flooding into passive investment funds, which run on autopilot by tracking an index. Stock pickers, archetypes of 20th century Wall Street, are being pushed to the margins. Since somebody is losing there has to be some non obvious upside to another player. How will this be gamed? What will it mean economically in the long term?[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles…[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2016https://uploads.disquscdn.c……

      1. Pointsandfigures

        Consolidation is the result of regulation. Big govt forces companies that are under their thumb to get big.As far as passive vs active, Fama proved the difference years ago. All public pension funds should be passive investors-but allocate a small amount of capital to VC and PE. PE and VC investors theoretically have inside information which is literally the only way an active investor can consistently beat the market

        1. sigmaalgebra

          No, this is all very much seriously wrong:If there are only PE, VC, and index fund investors, then that’s nonsense. In particular, the index funds will go into the tank, that ls, lose money big time.Why? The Fama, Sharpe, etc. work has an assumption, a big, huge, gigantic assumption: The active investors will look at all the available information, even if it is all just public, and buy/sell stocks based on that.Once those active investors have done their work and done it well, THEN, and ONLY then, can the Fama, Sharpe stuff be correct and the index funds be good investments in any sense. Again, without that work of the active investors, the index funds will lose money because there will be no good, diligent, highly motivated, active investors driving the accurate prices the index funds need. So, BS stocks won’t get bid down; great stocks won’t get bid up; the index funds will be paying too much for BS stocks and will soon enough lose money as the companies with the BS stocks lose, into bankruptcy or dirt cheap M&A if nothing else.Net, the index funds are getting free rides on the backs of the active investors — those investors keep the prices up to date, and the index funds watch the resulting prices and ride along, continually rebalancing their portfolios.For the robot investors, if they are only running the index funds, then those funds will save on some costs with no significant changes.For active investors, I doubt that the robots will make much difference for a while: The robots are too dumb. The passive investors can look at the balance sheets, analysts’ reports, interview company executives, evaluate the products/services of the companies, evaluate other relevant events, etc., and the robots can’t do that before they are, e.g., at LEAST able to read natural language with real understanding and draw the more obvious conclusions, and nothing in computing, AI or anything else, is at all close to that.So, yet again, once again, over again, one more time, the AI hype is in the spring of hope on the way to the hot summer of effort to the fall of failure and another AI winter.My understanding is that the index fund portfolio rebalancing work has been programmed into computers for essentially automatic execution for a long time. Calling that work robots with AI won’t change anything.

          1. LE

            Interesting, I was kind of thinking this intuitively but didn’t know enough to express why it was the case. That said I have no clue whether you are right!

          2. sigmaalgebra

            > That said I have no clue whether you are right!It’s right, and for the reasons I gave.But, of course, it’s all theoretical, that is, an argument why we won’t go there, and we won’t. That is, that robots will mean the only investors are PE, VC, and index funds can’t, and, thus, won’t work. In particular, good active investors are just crucial to the index funds doing well.If there get to be too few good active investors (really, too little good active investing), then there will be a lot of mis-priced stocks and big bucks for the better active investors who short the overvalued stocks and go long on the undervalued ones, with one Ferrari for each day of the week and a nice yacht in Long Island Sound for the weekends, and, presto, bingo, more good active investors.How the prices the index funds pay get determined by the active investors is at the core of Sharpe’s Nobel prize.For more reading, Sharpe has a college text on investing. There is also one by Stanford applied math prof David Luenberger.

          3. pointsnfigures

            Passive investing has consistently beaten active investing over time. As a matter of fact, the state of Nevada only does passive investing. For the average investor, passive investing in an index does better than active. By a long shot. Since the crash, passive has beaten active.It’s an argument that has no definitive outcome because each side will point to data that backs up their claim. Backtesting only works with indexing, because an active investor would be cherry picking on a back test.Trouble is, passive investing requires three things that are antithetical to being human-discipline, patience, and no emotion.To consistently beat the market, you have to have an artificial edge. In today’s marketplace, it’s inside information, or speed. I beat the market every year I traded on the floor. I had an artificial edge. I paid $580k for that edge. HFT firms pay millions in co-loco fees to have that edge. It is rare that you find someone that has more knowledge than the market.Warren Buffett would give you the same advice.

          4. jason wright

            Being human is a state of indiscipline, impatience, and emotion?You know me too well.

          5. sigmaalgebra

            Our two posts are not in conflict.

      2. Salt Shaker

        Volatility drives passive investing, particularly when the market can swing so widely on news, sometimes relevant, sometimes not, vs. biz fundamentals. I’m personally heavily skewed towards index funds, while it obv also depends on one’s risk/tolerance, life stage, etc. I find I sleep a little bit better too vs. when engaging more heavily in personal investing.

        1. LE

          I find I sleep a little bit better tooThis is not my area of expertise at all however I will note that the further you get away from taking risk and being creative the less money you will make. (But I am with you on this one per below).For example in real estate (or other things that I have done) you make money by transforming things. So if you buy a condo in a nice building you “sleep a little bit better” however you aren’t going to profit as much as if you buy a building that is run down and needs renovation and/or do some other type of transformation of an asset. Of course if you simply don’t have the time then you can’t even take the harder route. You have to go simple and take the returns that you get.The reason that your approach makes sense in the market is that there is so much info that you don’t know and that you can’t control and that things do happen based on news that honestly don’t impact the fundamentals. That’s the main reason I don’t invest in stocks except for a small amount. It’s a total gamble. No wonder people are moving away from stock picking. The only generally tried and true formula I have seen is buying good companies on the cheap when the market is down because of news and holding on to them until they go up again.

    3. LE

      And my follow up question is “why is the market not moving and so stable since August?” It can’t be just the election or waiting for the Fed.

  5. sigmaalgebra

    For> Data Analytics using Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning;it would be improved just to say> Data AnalyticsThe stuff about> Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learningis a huge step down of the real potential.Uh, what did James Simons use?In the QA section of libraries, in pure/applied math, statistics, EE, and more, there is a lot on time series, linear, non-linear filtering, estimation, etc. well beyond anything on “Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning” going back to Norbert Wiener and forward through R. Kalman, D. Brillinger, and more.E.g., IIRC, without looking up my old notes, under no more than very mild assumptions, there is the Doob decomposition: Every stochastic process is the sum of a martingale and a predictable process. Moreover, every L^1 bounded martingale converges to some random variable (be careful when applying this with the Doob decomposition). And the rest is predictable! How ’bout that! I doubt that that’s what Simons used!In grad school, I got all I could on the math for Wall Street, e.g., on stochastic processes, control, etc. But I had to give up on Wall Street: Too few good mathematicians; too many arrogant, by the gut traders with enough money not to care about anything better. So, I’m doing my startup, right, not in making money trading stocks. I assume that Simons picked nearly all the low and medium fruit in that orchard.

  6. joelatone

    Oh, nice, thanks Fred. Chet and I will be submitting an application for Infraledger, our blockchain platform.