Feature
Sibos Hits Boston
Sibos Preview
The Value of Evaluation
Independent Valuations
Enterprise Data Firefighters
Buy-Side Data Management
Moving Along Swiftly
CONNECTIVITY
Sticking point – Feature. Joel Clark looks at the state of play regarding the post-trade processing of credit derivatives on the buy side, and concludes that, although significant recent efforts have been made by vendors and consortiums in this space, tru
Even though straight-through processing (STP) has been a reality for equities and fixed-income trading for some time, automating the back-office processing of credit derivatives remains as elusive as ever. Joel Clark reports on the success of recent back…
Marked to mayhem. Stewart Eisenhart takes a fresh look at the perennially challenging issues of pricing and valuations on the buy side, arguing that these functions have become all the more crucial to fund managers in the wake of the US sub-prime mortgage
Hitting bottom is never pleasant. Credit market participants – buy side and otherwise – are finding that out as the US sub-prime mortgage sector continues its wholly predictable but no less dramatic collapse. Volatility has skyrocketed, liquidity is…
Time with the traders – Joel Clark and photographer Robert Aberman spend the morning with the trading team at AXA Investment Management in London.
For the small group of traders at AXA Investment Managers in London the expectation to perform is intense, but as Joel Clark discovers, the quiet times can be just as demanding as the pressure that goes with the territory. Photos by Robert Aberman
Messing With Physics
I'm a bit of a documentary junkie. My favorite documentary writer and paroducer isn't Ken or Ric Burns, but science historian James Burke. His two series, Connections and The Day That the Universe Changed , presented seemingly unrelated scientific…
Nothing Good Ever Happens in August
I had planned to write about New York City's preparedness for a major storm after a bout of thunderstorms and a tornado left commuters wet, angry and mostly stationary last week. However, that truly pales in comparison to the storm affecting the credit…
Playing in Harmony
Everyone in the industry can all but agree that the days of the single-asset-trading exchange has gone the way of the open-outcry trading pit both have become quaint curiosities in the Internet age.
Adding Up the Value-Add
Roundtable
R&R 2.0: Summer Getaways
COVER STORY
More lip service to oversight
Readers are no doubt becoming tired of my editorialising of hedge fund regulation in the US, but so long as government officials and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) provide more fodder for the keyboard, I'm not really in a position to resist.
Corporate firefighters – Joel Clark looks at enterprise data management initiatives on the buy side and concludes that firms’ approaches to managing data is more reactive than proactive due to spiralling costs and debilitating time frames.
As buy-side firms trade increasingly complex instruments and new regulations demand stronger evidence of best execution, it seems a natural time to streamline the processes governing the management of data across the organisation. But as Joel Clark…
Hammer Time – Joel Clark plots the rise in popularity of internet-based auction platforms for the securities lending industry and explains the transparency and competition benefits offered by such systems.
Securities lending represents a growing part of the over-the-counter market, allowing investors to make short-term loans of their securities to generate revenues from their portfolios. Automation is a strong trend in the market, with several technology…
Rise of the replicants – Duncan Wood scrutinises the recent emergence of bank-launched indexes and their attempts to replicate certain hedge fund strategies through quantitative, rules-based products.
Investment banks are upping their efforts to mimc hedge fund strategies through quantitative, rules-based products. A variety of indexes have emerged that claim to replicate the major hedge fund strategies, although some fund managers are sceptical of…
Making Global Warming Pay
The nice thing about capitalism is that no matter what happens, for better or worse, there is always a way to make a buck, or a quid, off it.
Paying for Mifid
Call me a cynic, but is there any firm in the industry that doesn't expect to write a large check to regulators once the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid) goes into effect on Nov. 1?
Dark Pools on the March
When it comes to dark pools of liquidity in the equities world, the industry has had enough. Depending on which industry analyst's estimation you select, the more than 40 opaque trading venues are enough. I doubt that there were this many ECNs during the…
Making History
Today will go down as a major historical milestone. I'm not talking about commemorating 13 British colonies declaring independence, the merger of Upper and Lower Canada into the Dominion of Canada, or even independence of Argentina. No, today marks the…
Editor, Interrupted
I had planned to write this week’s letter on the U.S. market’s preparations for the July 9 Regulation NMS deadline, but when I learned that a car bomb plot was foiled outside our London office—which is located right in the middle of Haymarket—obviously,…