Peter Rudegeair
@rudegeair
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Wall Street Journal reporter covering hedge funds and investing.
New York
Joined July 2009
A startup had a vision for anti-woke banking (credit cards made from shell casing material, discounted insurance for gun owners) . Then came the allegations of on-the-job drinking, investor unrest & lawsuits . From @RachelEnsignWSJ, me & @AAndriotis .
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.@RonanFarrow highlighted Evan Gershkovich’s unjust imprisonment at an event last night with YLS dean @GerkenHeather . That’s a #FreeEvan pin reflecting off his lapel
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Some personal news.
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After almost 4 years at @WSJ I've written my first a-hed: . Credit score fanatics in the "800 Club" compete for top FICO scores. Not for better interest rates, but for bragging rights. “They’re obsessed" w/ @AAndriotis.
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From Cleveland to California, from Candy Crush to Cash App: how @Square CFO @AmritaAhuja got to where she is today, w/ a little help from @jack & 3 other mentors .
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Stripe is an index of global ecommerce, & that index thrived in 2020. Revenue rose ~70% to $7.4B. 500K+ new customers opened accounts. Other startups might have flashier apps, but @stripe (worth $95B) shows it's better to be a workhorse than a show pony.
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What would it look like if a tech giant were to jump into the banking business? A lot like what @Square has done with its lending business
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Cash App rules everything around me: @Square's mobile payments service has found an ardent fan club in the tastemakers of hip-hop
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RIP Plex: Google is scrapping its plan to offer bank accounts to users following missed deadlines and executive turnover @DaveCBenoit @amacker .
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So @Square:.-is applying to open a bank.-has lent >$5b to small businesses.-processed >$50b in card payments YTD.-operates a money-transfer service w/ 15m active users. But is litigating San Francisco's claim it's a financial company to save $$ on taxes.
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For Elmore Leonard novices who want to dive into his work, @TheAVClub put out this handy gateway to geekery in 2011 http://t.co/unFDlMUXEZ.
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When I got my 1st job at @Reuters, I was lucky enough to sit near Paul Ingrassia's office. Paul treated me as a peer even though he was a Pulitzer winner & I was the low man on the totem pole. RIP to a great reporter, editor, & leader
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No one has marshaled the twin forces reshaping Wall Street —the SPAC boom that has raised billions & the retail-trading surge that has humbled hedge funds—quite like @chamath. Let @maureenmfarrell & I introduce you to the market influencer of the moment
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Wells Fargo taps @blendlabsinc for digital mortgage apps: "I’ve never chosen a startup for a project of this size"
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Ex-Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos joins mortgage startup @blendlabsinc, making him 1 of the highest-profile execs to jump into fintech
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.@Stripe is now worth $35 billion, climbing closer to the top ranks of the highest-priced U.S. startups
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There are more Porsche Cayennes (price tag: €60,000) in Greece than taxpayers with incomes of more than €50,000 http://t.co/2y1azaGu.
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2 of the most valuable fintech startups teaming up: @SoFi working w/ @coinbase to let its members buy and sell bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies, says CEO @anthonynoto at #WSJDLIVE.
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Today marks 250 days since @evangershkovich was detained in Russia for doing his job as a journalist. It's time to bring Evan home #IStandWithEvan
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Old and busted: online lenders that consolidate debt.New hotness: online lenders that finance retail purchases. @Affirm raises $200m round at a nearly $2B valuation
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The only #fintech business model that's been a proven success is "giving customers a worse service for a lower price" http://t.co/NfwHWWIGFs.
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Prosper near deal for ~$5bln in loan commitments from Fortress, Soros, Jefferies & Third Point by @telisdemos & me.
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Dealmaking heating up in the online-lending world: @Navient to buy @MeetEarnest for $155 million in cash
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.@Chime is now valued at ~$25B. That's grown more than 10x in just 2.5 years and makes the banking startup worth more than most regional banks. An IPO could come in 2022.
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Wells Fargo releases two new credit cards aimed at high spenders http://t.co/CXKAzkle01 $WFC.
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.@Square sends millions of digital receipts, sometimes to the wrong person. From surprise gifts to pending divorces, the misdirected emails and texts result in spilled secrets
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.@SoFi's lending volume taking off: extended $1 billion in student/home/personal loans in Q2 http://t.co/jO6wZ4Uwal.
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Move over, @SoFi, & watch your back, @stripe: @GreenSkySays becomes 2nd most valuable US fintech startup after $200m investment from @PIMCO
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Day 50 of @evangershkovich's unjust detention in Russia. Our friend and colleague should be released immediately #IStandwithEvan
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A little-noticed ruling from an NY appeals court "poses an acute risk for the marketplace lending industry" http://t.co/Haqk9pStdI
#fintech.
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Today @icecube sued @RobinhoodApp for using his image in a @RobinhoodSnacks newsletter, and the complaint is 🔥: “Robinhood is the antithesis of everything that Ice Cube stands for”.
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Computers are buying 1000s of houses around the country. They learned how in Phoenix. @RyanDezember & I explore how the Arizona capital become the proving ground for experiments in residential real estate
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Tired: putting ~1/3 of your hedge fund's money into bitcoin Wired: putting ~1/2 of your hedge fund's money into bitcoin $BTC.
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~300K @RobinhoodApp users bought $HOOD at the IPO price Small % of its 22.5 million user base but ~4x as many participants as the next most popular listing on its IPO Access platform (~78K bought into $FXLV)
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LendUp, aka "Capital Two," raised ~$50mln to roll out a subprime credit card to compete with Capital One
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I get considerably fewer press releases in my inbox when banking startups cut the yields on their savings accounts vs raising them
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Dan Loeb's Hot Hand Goes Cold. Losses at Third Point are leading to a flood of investor withdrawals. Strategies that once produced big gains (activism, shorting, VC) haven't helped lately. w/ @GZuckerman & @CaraRLombardo .
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"This market is going to reward philosophers over students of business" http://t.co/kIuVDsuM WHOSE DEGREE IS WORTHLESS NOW, WHARTON KIDS?.
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The Hottest Investment for Hedge Funds Is Other Hedge Funds. Big firms like Millennium are so flush with cash they're outsourcing it to other firms.
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Silver Lake buys $500m stake in @creditkarma in a secondary sale valuing the #fintech firm at ~$4 billion
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Even grandma wants in on the #bitcoin action. "I didn’t even know what it was, a piece of coin?" said 70-year-old Rita Scott, who looked up $BTC prices between hands of poker at a Vegas casino.
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SoFi is looking to raise ~$500 mln to expand internationally & branch out beyond lending to just "great people"
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A tax-reform plea from #fintech: make the IRS set up an API that can serve up tax-return data to lenders
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Credit Karma is the latest #fintech firm to announce a huge fundraising http://t.co/V0MqdHGOG2 Now valued at $3.5 billion.
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Last week, @RachelEnsignWSJ, @AAndriotis & I wrote about a turbulent start for @glorifi, an anti-woke banking startup facing allegations of on-the-job drinking, investor unrest & lawsuits. Yesterday, the CEO told employees he was resigning.
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A fintech founder buying a bricks-and-mortar bank might sound as congruous as an Uber exec hailing a cab w/ an outstretched arm. Read why @Plaid's @williamhockey spent $50M on @columnbank & how the sorry state of banks' tech is holding back innovation.
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Meet the 22-year-old Stanford dropouts who rode credit cards into the billion-dollar startup club
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Payoff, a #fintech firm that applies the science behind online dating to personal finance, just raised a lot of debt http://t.co/ZwnrBhiYKC.
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BofA's profits are up, but only b/c it lost money last Q1; trading, lending disappoint http://t.co/dz7wKddW5t by me & @chris_rexrode $BAC.
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Favorite new ICO is SMG Cash:.-19 year-old New Zealand kid looks to raise $220mln for his website.-inflates web traffic by factor of 10,000.-tells reporter "It's not [true] that we're bullshitting".-NZ regulator discourages people from investing.
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Steve Cohen hops on #fintech bandwagon: Point72 starts venture unit to fund financial technology
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.@coinbase has attracted ~$100m to its new custodian service that caters to professional investors. "it's getting harder and harder to find a crypto bear," @brian_armstrong says at #WSJDLive.
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Actors of "The Big Short" talk about the debt crisis, in Beverly Hills
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Vikram Pandit, former boss of one of the world's biggest credit-card issuers, is making a $100m bet on a startup in that business
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Shoutout to @Apple/@GoldmanSachs for the early invite for their new credit card, though they did mess up the place where I bought an iced tea the 1st time I used it
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Also my score is 806 don't @ me.
After almost 4 years at @WSJ I've written my first a-hed: . Credit score fanatics in the "800 Club" compete for top FICO scores. Not for better interest rates, but for bragging rights. “They’re obsessed" w/ @AAndriotis.
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Amount of state assets Greece promised to privatize: $65 billion. Amount of state assets Greece has actually privatized: $2 billion.
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Online lending went from peer-to-peer to peer-to-hedge-fund & now to peer-to-a-fund-whose-investors-are-peers
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My first @WSJ byline: Wells Fargo corporate banking chief Mike Johnson to retire http://t.co/4nwuAF3AHE $WFC.
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Regulators give thumbs-up to @Upstart's use of alternative data to qualify more consumers for loans
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2019: Facebook seeks up to $1B for a novel cryptocurrency to upend banking & payments: 2022: Facebook's crypto venture is selling its tech to a bank for ~$200M
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Credit-card fraud keeps rising, despite new security chips 15.4 million ID fraud victims in 2016
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.@PayPal's buying spree rages on: it's buying @Hyperwallet, provider of payout services for online marketplaces, for $400m
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Five months have gone by since @evangershkovich was detained in Russia for doing his job. #FreeEvan.
Evan Gershkovich’s parents visited The Wall Street Journal newsroom today to meet with staff and stand with Evan
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Most days @LaurenLaCapra and I write about fixed-income trading and bank capital, so this was a nice change of pace http://t.co/gSoyleOs04.
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Robinhood wants you to buy Robinhood on Robinhood. @RobinhoodApp is allocating up to 35% of its IPO shares to its own users, the biggest test yet of a movement to get more retail participation in public offerings.
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VCs are using the online lenders' playbook to go after the life-insurance industry
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.@RobinhoodApp's 1st earnings report post IPO:.-$565 M in revenue (⬆️>2x).-~1/4 of that was from $DOGE .-more $$ from crypto than stocks + options.-$31 M in interest income on $5.4 B in margin loans.-$19 M in fraud losses on debit cards (⬆️21x).
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I interviewed @Dan_Schulman about @PayPal's efforts to combat hate speech & learned:.-up to 100 users a month get booted off PayPal for promoting hate.-PayPal got more active here after the Charlottesville rally .-Dan got involved in banning Infowars.
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@CollegeGameDay This story just got VERY 2019:.-@AnheuserBusch gives kid free beer after he went viral.-local reporter digs up racist tweets kid sent when he was 16 .-@AnheuserBusch cuts all ties.-local reporter outed for sending his own racist tweets yrs ago.
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From the how-things-change dept.:. 5 years ago this week, @lizrhoffman & I wrote this story: "Goldman Sachs, Adviser to the Elite, Wants to Be Your Local Bank". Welp, not anymore!
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The latest Wells Fargo scandal: jr investment bankers are being fired/suspended over allegedly expensing dinner deliveries too early & covering it up w/ @EmilyGlazerWSJ & @coulterjones #seamlessgate.
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Prominent #fintech VCs at @money2020 seeing overvaluation everywhere they look. They just aren’t worried about it.
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A startup has raised $700 mln through sales of a new cryptocurrency called EOS that it describes as having "no purpose"
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Didn't understand debt-ceiling debate until I saw this Taiwanese animation: http://t.co/jgKWNPA.
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Latest bond deal from @SoFi is 1st by a startup online lender to receive a AAA rating from Moody’s
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Sweden's Klarna, one of Europe's most valuable #fintech startups, is rolling out loans for U.S. online shoppers
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.@Wealthfront made its name on providing simple, low-cost index funds to investors. Now, it's automatically putting 20% of their $$ into a portfolio of derivatives
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It's going to cost @Visa, @Mastercard & big banks ~$6.5B to settle claims they colluded to charge businesses inflated fees to accept credit cards
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.@Checkout CEO Guillaume Pousaz dropped out of his Swiss university 13 yrs ago to surf up and down the Calif. Now he runs a $2B payments startup that's going after the biggest banks
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New: Meme-stock mania powered @RobinhoodApp's business to new heights in the 1st 3 months of 2021, with its biggest source of revenue more than tripling to $331M.
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Jean Chalopin told regulators he wouldn't change the biz plan of a tiny bank he wanted to buy. Then it got a new name, a new shareholder (SBF's trading firm), & new plans for crypto-yield accounts. @aosipovich, @DaveCBenoit & me on the Moonstone Bank saga
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One consequence of that growth is a spike in customer-service complaints (eg, accounts inexplicably locked for a month+, long delays in getting routine issues fixed). @RobinhoodApp got 3 months worth of support requests in 1 week in Jan.
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