WealthTech safari - week of july 10, 2026. YCharts to acquire Zephyr, expanding its advisor analytics platform. * YCharts, an advisor-facing analytics and research platform, is acquiring investment-analytics provider Zephyr in a deal framed as a partnership that broadens its toolset for financial advisors. * Layering Zephyr's portfolio analytics onto YCharts' recent AI rollout deepens the platform's push to become an all-in-one research and reporting hub for growth-minded advisory practices. Knote: I have not seen anything official from the Company yet, but it is being reported by some of the users. Etico names wealthtech veteran Walter Gengarelly as its first CTO. * Etico Financial, an EOS Ventures-backed financial services and technology firm, appointed 25-year advisor-platform veteran Walter Gengarelly as its inaugural Chief Technology Officer. * The hire signals Etico's intent to build proprietary, advisor-facing technology from the ground up rather than assemble a stack from third-party vendors. PureFacts embeds WealthTechs data technology into its revenue platform. * PureFacts Financial Solutions, a revenue performance management provider, will license and embed WealthTechs' data aggregation and connectivity technology into its next-generation data ingestion capability. * Positioning clean, trusted data as the foundation for agentic AI reflects a broader industry bet that automation across the revenue lifecycle only works on top of normalized, validated account data. Morningstar's sale of ByAllAccounts to Pello collapses. * Morningstar confirmed its planned sale of the ByAllAccounts aggregation unit to Salt Lake City startup Pello will not close, unwinding a deal first announced in April 2026. * The failed exit is a setback for CEO Kunal Kapoor's "capital-lite" Wealth strategy and underscores mounting turbulence in account aggregation as the CFPB weighs data fees and Plaid pursues a reduced $8 billion IPO. Knote: Well, I guess the whole thing ended even more confusingly than it began. WealthTech Strategy Partners LLC still don't know who actually owns Pello. WealthAi and Flanks partner to fix fragmented wealth data. * WealthAi, an AI operating system for wealth managers, partnered with data-infrastructure provider Flanks to give users direct access to institution-grade data from more than 650 institutions worldwide. * By promising a single source of truth across every asset class, the tie-up takes direct aim at the legacy aggregators that family offices and private banks still rely on for costly, manual reconciliation. Salesforce launches 'Agentic Advisor' for RIAs amid a stock slide. * Salesforce launched Agentic Advisor, a suite of agentic AI capabilities built into Agentforce for Financial Services, as its stock trades down 41% year-to-date on fears it fell behind in AI. * Experts flagged one-to-two-year implementations, six-figure setup costs, and a lack of turnkey wealth integrations, raising doubts about adoption among RIAs that already have their own AI strategies. Knote: This is definitely a step in the right direction for Salesforce given the new breed of AI-centric CRM challengers, but it remains to be seen if it really addresses the bigger issue: the database. Not that it really matters since, once you implement Salesforce, you really can't leave it. At least, until someone invents the magical ruby-red slippers that take you effortlessly to another provider. * Tiburon Strategic Advisors released new written research on wealth and investment management technology and outsourcing, analyzing more than twenty categories by market size, leading competitors, and outlook. * Its call that platform TAMPs will become the de facto standard while single-point solutions struggle sharpens the stakes for standalone WealthTech vendors heading into a predicted wave of IPOs and M&A. Objectway acquires FNZ's Swiss private banking technology business. * Objectway, a global WealthTech provider, agreed to acquire FNZ Switzerland SA (formerly New Access), adding 160-plus professionals and over 40 private-bank clients under the Objectway Switzerland brand. * The deal extends Objectway's core-to-digital platform into new wealth hubs and typifies the consolidation reshaping WealthTech providers as private banks demand standardized, scale-driven technology. Wealth and retirement convergence heats up at the workplace. * Industry leaders from Creative Planning, LPL, and Edward Jones are racing to merge wealth and workplace-retirement services, with advisors who do both reportedly growing 2.1 times faster. * With $74 trillion in wealth assets dwarfing defined-contribution pools, the workplace is emerging as a prime funnel for capturing rollovers and high-value wealth relationships. FactSet partners with and invests in TIFIN.AI for advisor workflows. * FactSet announced a partnership and strategic investment in TIFIN.AI to deliver AI-powered advisor workflows, starting with a Meeting Prep Agent and a Book Intelligence Agent. * By running TIFIN.AI's engine entirely inside FactSet's infrastructure with auditable, domain-specific answers, the pair pitches governance and hallucination control as the differentiator over generic LLMs. Vestmark's TAMP AUM leaps 5x to $50 billion on asset-manager referrals. * Vestmark Advisory Services now manages $50 billion of RIA portfolios, up from $10 billion 18 months ago, crediting referral relationships with major asset managers and its VAST tax-overlay and direct-indexing tool. * The surge illustrates how tax management - cited by 76% of platforms as the top priority - has become the decisive feature winning standalone-RIA flows onto UMA platforms. Knote: Third-party models grew 46% last year, which is excellent growth. But, it seems Vestmark is growing even faster with smart technology use, courting relationships with the asset managers, and good targeting.

YCharts is acquiring Zephyr in a move that will expand its analytics platform for financial advisors. The announcement was shared by Jay Coulter, a longtime YCharts user, who described it as a significant development for advisors and their clients. YCharts provides a technology platform that helps advisors scale their practices. Coulter noted the platform's recent artificial intelligence rollout has strengthened available tools. The Zephyr acquisition is expected to broaden functionality further for firms and clients using the platform. No official announcement from the company has been released yet, though the transaction is being reported by users.

The week in charts (5/29/26). By Charlie Bilello 29 May 2026 Something I'm excited about is a new offering from YCharts called Communities. It gives advisors a way to follow research and insights from voices they already trust, directly inside the platform many use daily for investment research and client communication. That means instead of trying to recreate the charts or analysis after reading my newsletter, YCharts subscribers can quickly pull it up and work with it inside the platform. It's designed to make following market commentary feel more actionable and integrated into one's daily workflow. I'm excited to be one of the first Communities available, helping advisors bring the charts and market commentary they follow into their day-to-day workflow. The most important charts and themes in markets and investing... 1) The Ultimate Pricing Power Nvidia's net profit margin surged to a record high of 71% in Q1, up from 12% a decade ago. No company in history has had as much pricing power as Nvidia does today, fueled by its continued dominance in the AI chip market. Nvidia stands in a league of its own when it comes to earnings growth and shareholder returns over the last decade. Bilello also states has never seen a company scale this fast at this size. 2) An All-Time High a Day Another day, another all-time closing high for the S&P 500. The index has hit 22 so far in 2026 and Bilello also states still have 7 months to go. What's fueling the vertical advance in the stock market? S&P 500 EPS have far exceeded expectations in Q1 (+29% YoY vs. +13% estimate heading in) and are now expected to increase by 24% this year. Bilello also states has never before seen earnings growth this high outside of post-recessionary rebounds. This is an unprecedented boom driven by the massive EPS gains in big tech from AI. 3) The Memory Mania The Roundhill Memory ETF (Ticker: $DRAM) launched on April 2 of this year. It already has $12 billion in assets under management, becoming the fastest ETF in history to cross above $10 billion. What's behind the massive inflows? Investors chasing performance with the ETF more than doubling since its launch less than 2 months ago. What are the biggest holdings in this ETF? Micron Technology (28%) and two South Korean companies: SK hynix (28%) and Samsung (18%). Together they make up 74% of the ETF. Micron Technology's market cap crossed above the $1 trillion mark this week and has increased by over 10x in the last year. SK hynix and Samsung are the two largest stocks in the South Korean stock market (54% combined weight in $EWY ETF). As a result, South Korean stocks have more than quadrupled over the last 17 months, trouncing every other country. 4) Amazon IPO vs. SpaceX IPO Amazon's IPO in June 1997 came less than 3 years after Jeff Bezos founded the company. Its market cap at the time: $442 million. Its market cap today: $2.865 trillion. That's a 6,484x increase. The SpaceX IPO is set to price in June after 24 years as a private company. Its valuation hit $1.5 trillion this month, up from $10 billion a decade ago. Its market cap is expected to be at least $1.75 trillion when it goes public, making it the 7th biggest public company in the US. The entire IPO investing landscape has changed with companies staying private far longer than ever before (see its Podcast Discussion on IPO investing). 5) Persistent Inflation: Taking Its Toll The Fed's preferred measure of inflation (Core PCE) moved up to 3.3% in April, its highest level since October 2023. Core PCE has now been above the Fed's target level for 62 consecutive months. The persistence of higher and higher prices seems to be taking its toll. Two examples: * Rising Delinquencies in Credit Cards (13.1%, highest since 2011), Student Loans (10.3%, highest since 2020) and Auto Loans (5.6%, highest on record). * The lowest Personal Savings Rate in the US (2.6%) since April 2008. 6) A Few Interesting Stats... a) Self-driving taxi company Waymo is now doing over 1.3 million rides per month in California, a 16x increase over the past two years. b) The S&P 500's Dividend Yield has moved down to 1.07%, the lowest level in history. c) Nvidia's forward P/E ratio (17x) is less than half the forward P/E ratio of Walmart (36x) and Costco (44x). d) Amazon vs. Walmart... 25 yrs ago: Walmart revenue 68x larger than Amazon 20 yrs ago: Walmart revenue 36x larger than Amazon 15 yrs ago: Walmart revenue 12x larger than Amazon 10 yrs ago: Walmart revenue 4x larger than Amazon Today: Amazon revenue > Walmart revenue e) What's been the best hedge against inflation over the past 50 years? (Podcast Discussion) And that's it for this week. Thanks for reading! Disclaimer: All information provided is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Read its full disclosures here. 23 May 2026 by Charlie Bilello 07 May 2026 by Charlie Bilello 29 Apr 2026 by Charlie Bilello 17 Apr 2026 by Charlie Bilello 08 Apr 2026 by Charlie Bilello