Heading into the final days of the third quarter, I am looking forward to more than just a new sheaf of data concerning venture capital flows around the world.

When September wraps, we’ll start a countdown for earnings reports from consumer-serving fintech giants, data that will help us understand present-day market appetite for trading and investing products; given the sheer number of fintech startups that touch at least a part of that operating space, we have our eyes open.

In late 2020 and 2021, companies offering consumers savings, investing and trading products were hot shit. Coinbase, Robinhood, M1 and others grew rapidly; hell, startups were born and scaled that offered other companies the ability to bake services like equity trading into their platforms!

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We all know what happened next: 2022 brought a change in market conditions and consumer interest — or, perhaps, ability — to save, invest and trade declined. This led to Coinbase, to pick a well-known entity in the consumer fintech market, rapidly flipping from impressive profits to stiff losses in the space of a few quarters. Robinhood saw its market value fall sharply, and M1 laid off staff.