Feature
Swipe left: repo reporting no match for Brexit, or collateral
A happier start than Emir, but SFTR honeymoon is over now that trades report separately in UK and EU.
Esma plan ‘won’t help’ fix Mifid swaps data problem
Dealers say proposal to force disclosure of all big-bank OTC derivatives trades won’t improve data.
Bridging the gap: Broadridge looks front-to-back with acquisition of Itiviti
The deal signals a transformative move for Broadridge into the front-office space to help clients simplify their front-to-back technology stack. But some industry observers are skeptical about how it will achieve this.
A kick in the privates: In-demand unlisted stock trading faces tech, transparency challenges
Private stocks are opaque, illiquid, behave differently from public markets, and lack the same infrastructure as public marketplaces, creating back-office integration challenges for firms that want to trade these stocks in a more liquid manner. But as…
GameStop post-mortem: Alt data world confronts eroding barrier between online and real life
After Redditors staged an epic short squeeze against a handful of hedge funds, some in the industry are left wondering whether today’s models and data techniques are prepared for world where online often equals real life.
So long, Sseoms: Vendors vie to onboard Bloomberg clients ahead of April sunset
Sseoms competitors are stepping into the breach left by Bloomberg’s move to sunset the sell-side focused suite of services. This could be a chance for a new premier provider to snap up some business, while leaving others to reevaluate their standing in…
Magnetic tape looks to find a new life at banks in a cloud-based world
IBM, which recently set a new world record for tape storage, says a lot of its financial services clients use the medium for storage as its cheaper and safer than other digital storage options. Others are skeptical of tape’s long-term prospects.
Utility is success? Row brews over futures post-trade workflows
Futures market participants say standardizing trade allocations through a post-trade utility could prevent a repeat of the chaos seen in March 2020, when back-office systems fails resulted in thousands of trade breaks.
OTC FX options market gears up for faster electronification
The share of electronic trading in the market remains low, but a host of factors promise to change that for good.
All roads lead to Bergamo: Euronext eyes new home for its tech
Market participants fear a “horrible” relocation project and more room for latency arbitrage should the exchange move its data center to Italy.
Broker data policies stoke fears of ‘exchange-style’ fees and audits
Interdealer brokers are looking enviously at the way exchanges have been able to grow data revenues, providing a stable stream of profits as other business lines have declined. But following the exchange model has its own challenges.
The embrace of buy-side interoperability: State Street, SimCorp team up
The partnership between the two major players in the buy-side technology space reflects the shift in how rivals do business.
Vendors Continue to Move Products, Services to the Cloud: Some Examples
Last year, most (if not all) financial technology providers either completed or started major projects that involved moving their products and services to the cloud. WatersTechnology looks at 15 of the more interesting cloud-migration initiatives from…
Goldman Sachs, IBM Lay Out Quantum Project for Derivatives Pricing
The two firms spent the better part of 2020 developing a detailed analysis of the quantum computing resources needed to achieve quantum advantage in derivatives pricing. Execs from IBM and Goldman explain why this benchmark is important for future…
Quants Find New Ways to Identify Inventive Companies
Buy-side firms are using patent and other types of data to identify trailblazer companies from phonies.
Machine Learning in the Capital Markets 2020: ML Spreads During Pandemic
WatersTechnology looks at how 10 different firms are embedding machine learning algorithms into their platforms and tools.
ICE ‘Bonds’ Acquisitions into Fixed-Income Powerhouse
In this profile of the Intercontinental Exchange, Lynn Martin explains how the company’s ICE Data Services unit is creating a unified offering with fixed income data at its core, after a series of acquisitions that began with its purchase of IDC in 2015.
Point Break: How Vendors Push Their Products to the Limit
Vendors don’t release new products or updates without putting their software through rigorous testing. What does that testing involve, and what different approaches do companies employ? Max Bowie finds out.
At the ‘Fringes of Realism’: Agent-Based Models Take Hold Among Quants
Agent-based modeling has taken root seemingly everywhere throughout the last decade, from theoretical physics, to military operations, to public health, to ride-sharing apps like Uber, and to a much lesser extent, finance. However, a year such as 2020…
Regulation Won’t Address Market Data Costs
Market participants say Esma’s latest efforts to address the cost and complexity of market data fees don’t address the root of the problem.
‘Massive Land Grab’: S&P’s IHS Markit Buy Creates Data Juggernaut, But Users Fear Price Hikes
The deal reflects the broader trend of market participants pursuing scale to create true front-to-back trading and data environments, which may signal a trading platform acquisition in the future—though the IHS Markit acquisition may face regulatory…
Natural Language Generation: Great Promise, Significant Barriers
Sell-side firms and data providers are increasingly experimenting with natural-language generation to create new forms of automatically curated reports, emails and alerts, but the technique comes with significant challenges.
Model Misfires Raise Questions Over Training Data
Quants wrestle with how far into the past their machine learning models should peer.
FX Markets Ripe to Exploit Sentiment Data, Experts Say
Already well established as an alpha-enhancing input to equities trading, sentiment data is now being applied to other asset classes, starting with foreign exchange.