Despite all that’s been happening in the financial markets lately and the challenges that Merrill has faced, the firm has put together an impressive online multi-media presentation about economic realities after the election. In the firm’s monthly Perspective e-newsletter, Merrill included a link to a sitelet that has a number of video clips from a hosted panel of such political heavyweights as Mark McKinnon (former advisor for President Bush and Sen. McCain), Peggy Noonan (Wall St. Journal columnist and author), and Harold Ford (former Tennesse Representative and current Vice Chairman for Merrill). David Rosenberg (Merrill’s Chief Economist) added the firm’s economic perspective and the panel itself was moderated by CNN analyst Jefery Toobin.

This is an impressive review and analysis that provides timely, valuable information to clients and it does a good job of subtly showcasing Merrill’s reach even during tumultuous times. The only surprising thing is that we’ve only seen this promoted to clients. One would think this is timely enough and interesting enough to promote to non-clients as well.

Recently, MFS added something to both the public investor site and advisor site that we don’t remember seeing recently on a Mutual Fund Monitor - Advisor site - a poll asking people for their views on the market. Users can choose from one of four options - extremely optimistic, somewhat optimistic, somewhat pessimistic and extremely pessimistic - to express their opinion on how the market will perform over the next six months. Continue Reading »

In our latest e-Monitor Update (subscription required), we highlighted the new optionsXpress Trading Quotient sitelet which features an aptitude test investors can use to evaluate their trading and investing knowledge. While they can choose to keep their test score to themselves, investors are also provided a number of tools that allow them to share or compare their score with their peers.

• Groups - Users can join groups in one of three categories - NFL Fans, Political Affiliation and State of Residence. Members’s scores are averaged together and displayed to the rest of the community.
• Challenge a Friend - Registered users can challenge anyone they know to take the test and compare their scores through an onsite email service. While the email is supposed to include the original user’s score, we found that this important piece of information was missing from our email.
• Bookmarking on Social Networks - Users can also bookmark the test or post a Trading Quotient badge on a number of popular social networking sites like Facebook, Technorati and Deli.cio.us or their personal blog.

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Account aggregation is back in the news with a piece from today’s American Banker that discusses Wells Fargo’s option to forgo account aggregation (again). Frankly, it’s nice to see a bank not blindly chase after this alluring yet never-can-quite-make-it feature. Several years ago when Yodlee first arrived on the scene, account aggregation seemed destined to be the killer app that would enable firms to round-up all a client’s outside accounts. It never quite happened.

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