robot advisers site crash

29/04/2020
05/01/2018
"The web sites of two of the country’s biggest robo-advisers -- Wealthfront Inc. and Betterment LLC -- crashed as the S&P 500 Index sank 4.1 percent. Complaints quickly spread across Reddit and other Internet sites from people who had trouble logging onto their accounts. "

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-05/robo-adviser-websites-crashed-cutting-clients-off-from-accounts

By

Peggy Collins

Updated on June 6, 2017 3:05 PM BR (Sao Paulo)

As a society, we’ve decided we trust robots to weld our cars together but we’re not ready to let them drive. How about investing our savings? Automated financial services, known as robo-advisers, are software programs that use algorithms to do what flesh-and-blood financial advisers do, but at a far lower cost. The startups that launched the industry said the rise of robo-advisers would both disrupt the $20 trillion field and give millions of investors access to the kind of smarts only the well-to-do have been able to afford. It’s not yet clear whether robo-advisers can outperform their human counterparts on anything other than price — no small matter. Either way, the big players in the field have decided the idea has enough promise for them to try to beat the newbies at their own game.
(...)
Morgan Stanley is augmenting its 16,000 financial advisers with machine-learning algorithms that suggest trades, take over routine tasks and send reminders when your birthday is near.
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Many American investors have turned to advisers who charge a flat fee, most commonly 1 percent of a client’s assets under management. In general, traditional advisers only serve customers with significant savings, often at least $250,000, or in some cases millions. Betterment has no minimum; Wealthfront’s is $500. Online, potential clients answer a few questions about things like their age, salary and financial goals. Computer algorithms then propose one of several cookie-cutter portfolios — such as 40 percent in stocks and 60 percent in bonds for someone who said their first priority is having a safety net. The services usually use a range of exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, which invest in stocks, bonds and other assets such as
natural resources and
corporate debt.
The programs periodically buy and sell securities to keep the mix matched to investors’ risk tolerance.
https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/robo-advisers