This has an insane amount of detail. Is this a pitch?
How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
11–20 of 101 posts
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#12Maybe they should offer an Amazon weighted fund, that invests based in your personal consumption, ie if you buy a lot of Gillette razers then buy some Gillette shares.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#13Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier
Why would one think that?
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#14I don't think this would be a good idea for Amazon. I don't trust it right now to provide me things that aren't counterfit unless its sold by the actual supplier. Allowing funds to be on its platform without proper vetting seems strange. If Amazon actually wanted to go into the Asset Management space I would actually see it buying something like Robinhood. The problem in Asset management is all of the people who woul…
> I don't trust it right now to provide me things that aren't counterfit That might be true for a small percent of HackerNews readers that are also Daringfireball readers - but the world at large still trusts Amazon; that's the whole point of the article, really. As anecdotal evidence, an Amazon Investment might be the only way to convince me to become a Prime member (if that'd be a required precondition). I'd almost…
I don't know, I've seen a lot of trust erosion in the last few years even just among people I know (many of whom don't even work in tech), largely driven by them getting burned by problems with sketchy third-party re-sellers.
Unless you're paying close attention, it's not obvious to the average consumer that so many products are being sold by independent resellers vs Amazon themselves, so people aren't as careful as they might be on, say, eBay.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#15Isn't the virtual distribution shelf for investment funds already a pretty established thing? When I log into my online bank there is an online market place for funds, allowing you to place money in funds with maximum trust and minimum effort. How would Amazon improve on this?
(That said, I like the idea of always selecting the top 1% of fund customers and allowing them to offer their own funds)
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#16Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods
Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't trust it right now to provide me things that aren't counterfit That might be true for a small percent of HackerNews readers that are also Daringfireball readers - but the world at large still trusts Amazon; that's the whole point of the article, really. As anecdotal evidence, an Amazon Investment might be the only way to convince me to become a Prime member (if that'd be a required precondition). I'd almost…
so, I trust amazon too (at least the 'shipped and sold by amazon' brand... I consider everything else to be more like ebay) But... I just don't see how amazon would get me away, say, from vanguard. There are already good retail brokerages, and I don't see why I'd want to go through amazon instead of another company.
There are lots of ways, of course:
A. Going global: a lot of those "good retail brokers" are US-only. Sometimes it's dumb - I already have an ETrade account & signed all the paperwork including stuff relevant for my foreigner status... But ETrade will only let me trade my employer's stock, nothing else.
B. Bundle stuff that others can't match - e.g. Prime
C. One account, with good actual security (few appreciate that but some will)
D. Maybe new financial products that others can't match (I think Amazon is in a position where they might pull that off)
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#18Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.
Not everything related to quality can be easily identified by the end consumer. I trust major food manufacturers to have products without high levels of arsenic, lead, and mercury. I don't trust that counterfeit food manufacturers are ensuring the same.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#19Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.
'...Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.'
I don't know about Lacoste, but of the brands I do know about, they do a pretty good job on their own of undermining that rationale.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#20Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier Why would one think that?
Especially because AI/ML can used to generate fake reviews as well.