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 Liberty
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Glidden said, noting that part of what he called his “aspirational three-year plan” has involved bolstering digital assets, so customers can choose how to interact with the bank.
“It’s not up to us to choose how customers do business with us. It’s for them to choose, and it’s incumbent on us to make sure we have all those channels there. Branches are one of them, as are online, digital, and live chat.”
As he noted earlier, Amazon and other online entities, particularly dur- ing the pandemic, have altered peo- ple’s expectations when it comes to retail, and banks are, indeed, a retail business — so a bank’s digital channels need to live up to those heightened expectations.
The pandemic impacted Liberty’s Western Mass. plans in another way, Liberopoulos said: by giving it an opportunity to stay aggressive when not every bank did.
“It was an interesting time. We came to work every day, took our precau- tions, properly distanced, wore our masks,” he said, noting that clients still wanted to meet, some in person, some by phone or Zoom, whatever made them most comfortable. And those meetings were often productive.
“We were firm believers that COVID was going to end, so we’d look at their
Robinhood
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was no small feat. From Jan. 18 to Jan. 28 of this year, the price of GME went from about $18 to a high of $478, an increase of more than 2,600%. The Robinhood crowd is believed to be the main catalyst for this action. The day GME hit $478, it also went down to $112 before finally closing around $193.
In the month of January, 1.26 billion shares of stock changed hands in GME, almost 15 times the average monthly volume. Robinhood eventually cut
off any trading in GME shares on Jan. 28, as well as trading in several other stocks with a similar backstory. Imag- ine being a small investor, buying GME shares at, say, $250 on Jan. 27, watch- ing your investment nearly double the next day, but not being able to trade and exit your position profitably.
As previously stated, the Robin- hood story is the intersection of several trends: fiercely independent millen- nials, ‘killer app’ technology, and the rewards reaped from the instantaneous decision making of like-minded peo- ple, all backed by institutions awash in venture capital, looking for the next big idea. I cringe at the thought that Rob- inhood may compete with what firms like mine provide for clients, namely deep expertise, sound financial advice, and disciplined investing backed by serious research.
financial performance prior to
COVID,” Liberopoulos said. “We knew 2020 and 2021 were going to
be difficult, but if they were strong in ’17, ’18, and ’19 — and if their interim results look good in ’21 now that we’re getting past vaccinations — we were very eager to win that business.
“When some other banks were uncomfortable lending because of the numbers they saw for 2020, we were not,” he went on. “We understood it’s about the owners of the business, the history of the business, and we were all convinced, here at Liberty Bank, that we could see the light at the end of the tunnel and we would find the right cli- ents to work with.”
Glidden said he was “never prouder to be a banker” than he was in 2020.
“I never want to go through it again, of course, but what the banking indus- try did with the Paycheck Protection Program and the SBA lending as part of the CARES Act, that was a huge chal- lenge for the banking industry.”
He praised not only his own team, but his colleagues at other banks for working non-stop in those chaotic early days of PPP last spring, and kept working to get customers the help they needed.
“I could see it was a very unique,
Liberty
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FINRA, a regulatory agency that oversees brokerage firms, recently fined Robinhood $57 million and ordered $13 million in restitution to customers. It is the largest fine ever imposed by that regulator. In the press release, FINRA even referenced the suicide of a 20-year-old trader who panicked when his Robinhood app may have incorrectly displayed a mas- sive $730,000 loss and received only a generic autoreply when he e-mailed Robinhood customer service three times seeking help.
Robinhood the idea is a good one. Robinhood the company has a lot more growing pains on the horizon, which likely won’t prevent the founders from becoming fabulously rich. And I have no problem with wealthy entre- preneurs, who typically risk every- thing for a single idea. Time and again, however, the investment profession
is plagued with these stories in which investors are persuaded to pursue the next big thing. I think FINRA’s message is a powerful one. Now, if someone would just listen. u
Jeff Liquori is the co-founder and chief Investment officer of Napatree Capital, an investment boutique with offices in Longmeadow as well as Providence and Westerly, R.I.; (401) 437-4730.
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