Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Adding to this conversation:

Wells Fargo focuses their efforts on the wrong projects, attempting to play catch -up with more aggressive players. It is true that Wells was already losing hundreds of millions on Online Trading. Now we are trying to attract/keep BS investors who want to trade fractional shares? It’s like Nordstrom trying to keep up with a cheap Chinese $1 clothing manufacturer: ultimately you drag down your brand.

Charlie closes down the Ultra- HNW business (where the money is) and then sinks money in to allowing day-traders to trade fractional shares for free. This just means he has to slash costs (your jobs, not his) elsewhere to offset the losses.

And - nothing is fully automated with Wells Fargo technology. It may appear to be the case on the front-end but there are many manual corrections occurring in the background (much now in India) to make it appear that way. At best - 90% automated at 10% manual.

Looks like you all missed the part about $0 commissions/fees for online trading.

Wells Fargo loses money with their online trading platform. Other online firms offering zero-commission trading make their money by having agreements to direct their customer trade orders to specific providers in exchange for fees based on volume - payment for order-flow. Wells Fargo does not accept payment for order-flow because we can’t afford to take another “hit” since the 2016 accounts scandal.

How dare we offer services that others have been offering for yearrs! We must remain dinosaurs and never try to compete!

I love it when people like the OP comment on this Board about things they have no idea about. Wells Trade has recently invested a lot of money to offer new services for online clients to stay competitive. Stock fractions is only one of these services. Believe it or not, it is fully automated, unlike what the OP suggested in his opinion.

@clm+1oCcwy3Y

Here is a good thing for clients and the OP is complaining. And obviously the OP has no experience in the brokerage industry either self directed or full service. This is something that needed to be done to keep up with the industry. Wells Trade still falls behind competitors but that can't give up completely. The other option is to buy someone like MS did with Etrade.

@rqp+1oCcwy3Y

You sound like the miserable one - nothing intelligent to contribute, just nastiness in and nastiness out.

@wen+1oCcwy3Y

I don’t disagree, but would add that becoming a trustworthy bank should be the first priority to attract young adults and future high- earners.

I’m not part of WFA, but I’m guessing that this is an effort to attract the young and future high earners. Once an account is set up at WFA, there is a cost to move that account to another brokerage firm. (A year ago the cost was $90. Not sure what it is now.) So once an account is set up with fractional shares, many will stay with that account indefinitely.

This isn’t a bad move and shows some seldom seen foresight by WF. Although the expenses will outweigh the costs in the near term, those who are low-earners but interested in investing now are likely to be future high earners. WFA needs a way to attract the young who are drawn to RobinHood or other easy-to-access, non-pompous trading platforms.

You sound like you're miserable