Editors letter
Strong, But Possibly Lethal, Medicine
In the middle of last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it would raise the Section 31 transaction fee for exchanges and over-the-counter (OTC) markets to $25.70 per $1 million from its current $5.60 per $1 million,…
Location, Location
Who would have thought celebrity sightings could become part of daily life when you work for a financial publishing house? Prior to August 2008, DWT publisher Incisive Media's New York office was situated in the SoHo section of Manhattan in a building we…
Tools of the Trade
Last week's Oscars had a more diverse tone than many previous ceremonies, with Aussie host Hugh Jackman moving from one role to another, from bargain-basement stage decoration to all-singing, all-dancing Broadway-style numbers, and with Slumdog…
The Risk Reboot
EDITOR'S LETTER
Editor's Letter - Coming, ready or not
Hedge fund registrations in the US are back on the agenda. But this time the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has some heavy-hitting artillery behind it in the form of the recently introduced Hedge Fund Transparency Act in the US Senate and the…
Twittering on the trading floor
Social networking site meets buy-side trading? The latest Web 2.0 phenomenon, Twitter, functions in many of the same ways as its mainstream brethren, MySpace and Facebook, but its uses continue to evolve. Perhaps the most interesting development is that…
Reining in derivatives
Expectations are high that new US Congressional efforts to require hedge fund registration with the SEC will succeed this year, opening the door to greater oversight of the industry by a regulator no doubt eager to prove its mettle following the…
... But Tie Up Your Camel
As President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law last week, it felt as if the U.S. had passed a major milestone in dealing with the current economic meltdown.
One Moment in Time
Hindsight is always 20-20, so the saying goes. Of course it is; when the time comes to look back, we have facts to hand that may not have been available when we had to take action. While some decisions should never be made on gut feeling, financial…
New Game, New Players
After months of anticipation about who lead the London Stock Exchange (LSE) Group in the post-Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid) world, exchange officials announced at press time that former Lehman Brothers executive Xavier Rolet would…
The Continuing Story of Stimulus Bill
Last week, Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez, slugger for the New York Yankees baseball team, admitted to taking performance-enhancing substances while at the Texas Rangers. Many fans recoiled in shock and dismay, but others wondered how the buff-looking A-Rod had…
Automation Without Automatons
Automation has sometimes had a bad rap in our industry, especially when research reports raised the specter of trading algorithms displacing human traders in a Terminator -esque depiction of trading floors of the future. With a major economic stimulus…
Picking Your Poison
I've always found it prudent to stay away from holy wars, both the religious ones and the technological ones-be they Mac vs. PC, proprietary vs. open source, or Ethernet vs. Token Ring. These arguments always remind me of the conversations I had growing…
Trimming the Fat? Or Cutting to the Bone?
In the event that we're lucky enough not to know someone whose job has been directly affected by the financial crisis, the current layoff frenzy sweeping the entire economy serves as a reminder that although the recession may have been sparked by…
The Search for a Solution
EDITOR'S LETTER
Editor's Letter - Back in black
No, this editorial is not a poorly disguised attempt at paying homage to AC/DC's 1980 album of the same name.
New battle lines
If there's one thing I've learned about stock exchanges, it's that they love numbers. Usually record-breaking numbers. No matter how negative or doom-laden a set of financial results may be, exchanges nearly always manage to spin them so that somewhere,…
The $35,000 toilet bowl
At last, a fitting symbol of the unfortunate combination of malfeasance and stupidity crippling the financial services industry and pushing the world to the brink of economic depression: former Merrill Lynch chief executive John Thain, freshly relieved…
Who Can You Trust?
Listening to the non-stop news on how the banking industry continues to hemorrhage billions of dollars on toxic debt, and the occasional $35,000 commode, I wonder what this will mean for technological innovation on Wall Street.
Trade Secrets
Shocking revelations broke last week that the US National Security Agency systematically spied on news organizations and collected data on ordinary citizens under the veil of national security. The amount of data alleged to have been collected is…
The Rise of the Boutiques
Nature truly abhors a vacuum and so do the markets. While Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit tolls the official death knell of the "supermarket model" for financial institutions as he cleaves his firm into Citigroup and Citi Holdings, many firms and vendors are…
Get on Your Bike and Buy a House... or Two
They say an Englishman's home is his castle. They also say that home is where the heart is. But over the past year, we've seen an awful lot of hearts broken and castles under seige-all for that symbol of success and security, a home of one's own.