As the wealth management industry continues to consolidate, HighTower, one of the nation’s largest registered investment advisory firms, announced it hired Marc Cabezas as the new head of its Mergers and Acquisitions team. Cabezas, who will report directly to CEO Elliot Weissbluth, was formerly the vice president and head of corporate development at Edelman Financial Services. Prior to that, he spent 6 years as vice president of Focus Financial Partners. At HighTower, Cabezas will be charged with leading a team responsible for attracting RIA firms and advisor teams seeking to join the RIA. HighTower began its M&A push in 2017, when it sold a stake of the firm to Thomas H. Lee Partners, which committed $100 million to help support the company’s expansion.
Robinhood Adds Two Cryptos for Trading
Robinhood’s crypto trading feature, available in 17 states, now includes Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, the company announced. Investors in select states were already able to access trading features for cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum. Robinhood still doesn’t have its New York crypto license, unlike Square’s Cash app, but the commission-free trading app is actively working to get its license in the Big Apple. While advertised as no-fee, the spread on cryptos is essentially a transaction cost, or fee, reported TechCrunch. The app is a “dead simple way to get started” in cryptos, the report added.
Report: Millennials Won’t Buy, Boomers Age in Place
Young Americans are buying fewer houses, while older Americans aren’t moving out, according to a Harvard report. Homeownership rates among young adults are lower today than they were three decades ago, said researchers, who blame pressures created by elevated housing construction costs, weak income growth among low- and moderate-income households and expensive land prices. Americans aged 25 to 34 have homeownership rates at 4.2 and 6.3 percentage points less than their 1994 and 1987 counterparts, respectively. Although young adults will continue to fuel household growth, due to the numbers of millennials in the country, “adults under age 35 are still not forming households at rates as high as previous generations at that age,” according to the report. Meanwhile, the U.S. population aged 65 to 74 is increasing in size in both rental and homeownership markets at an “unprecedented pace” that researchers expect will continue over the next 10 years. Today’s homeowners 65 and older have ownership rates that are 3.3 percentage points higher than they were in 1987. Nationally, housing appears on “sound footing” when analyzed across metrics, helped along by full employment, the report noted.
