Some Sat morning thoughts. Stock trading is just the tip of the iceberg for democratization of finance. So many other areas ripe for disruption and we are starting to see it - cap markets, investment banking advisory, asset management are next (1/6)

Cap markets: big banks will continue to win bc of use of balance sheets to win mandates but they will feel pressure from direct listings vs. IPOs, use of tech for debt syndications matching investors with borrowers. Cos will go direct to investors, avoiding 2-3% fees (2/6)

Advisory (M&A, Restructuring): Big banks today charge insane $ amount (though low % of txn) bc of their brand name. No reason why new independent shops (spin outs of Big Banks) can’t and won’t do the same quality job with significantly lower overhead and thus less fees. (3/6)

This trend has already started in advisory. A lot of spin outs set up to serve the middle market for M&A and Restructuring. I think this trend continues as a new generation of more entrepreneurial bankers grows through the ranks (4/6)

Asset mgmt: similar to IB, a ton of spin outs in HF / PE. Alpha and returns do not nec. grow with GP scale, so LPs are chasing the talent rather than the brand name. What does this mean? Apollo, BX, etc will be less relevant in the next 10 years then the last 10 (5/6)

Fin: Old school finance showed us that the power of Wall St. has always resided with a select handful of names, but that’s likely going away and Wall St. will be a much democratized marketplace (with tech playing a part). Back to the memes now (6/6)