Editors letter
Credit Crisis Curse
Editor's Letter
Coming around again
The spectre of greater hedge fund oversight by financial regulators has seemed more or less dormant for several months now as Wall Street meltdowns become more and more spectacular. But even though the US Federal Reserve and other government agencies…
No good deed
Wall Street had a true roller coaster week in early March but not in terms of trading volumes or record profits. It was a thrill ride in terms of emotions, headlines, and hubris.
Liberate the Datacenter
It's time to shake up the organization chart a bit. For the longest time, corporate datacenters have been managed by banks' operations and real estate organizations. This needs to stop-and stop now. Administering a datacenter should be in the hands of…
Going Dutch
This week, the IMD bandwagon rolls into Holland for its inaugural Amsterdam Financial Information Summit, where panels of experts will attempt to hash out (pardon the pun) the key issues affecting the European market data landscape in a one-day program…
Looking for the Bear Necessities
Looking over JPMorgan Chase's proposed acquisition of Bear Stearns, the old saying, "Act in haste and repent in leisure," comes to mind.
If Content Is Still King...
... then why do we keep hearing that it's "commoditized," or that it's "noise"? If it's so valuable, why are market forces and industry initiatives seemingly aiming to make so much of it freely available? And if content is the priority, how come we hear…
Bear Attack
As I sit down to write this week's column, the warning klaxons are sounding up and down Wall Street as Bear Stearns turns to JPMorgan Chase to access emergency liquidity from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Bear CEO Alan Schwartz has already held the …
The Case For Scrutinizing the Scrutinizers
No doubt there were more than a few wry grins-or even cries of jubilation-in the financial markets when New York governor Eliot "Ness" Spitzer resigned last week after being caught spending a fortune on high-priced call girls. The former scourge of Wall…
Pimp My CPU
As the introduction and adoption of grid computing revolutionized the financial services industry, another disruptive technology is just off in the wings waiting to burst onto the scene-massive parallel processing.
Swimming With Sharks and Whales
The upcoming movie 21 tells the true story of a group of MIT students who set out to beat the casinos of Las Vegas at blackjack, using sophisticated card-counting techniques to determine whether a table was "hot" and to gauge the likelihood of winning…
To a Bloody War and Quick Promotion
The nice thing about financial technology is that every three years everyone takes a step to the left. At press time, Credit Suisse announced that Karl Landert will be filling in for departing Tom Sanzone as the über technologist at the Swiss financial…
No Country For Old Men
In a recent posting on his blog, Reuters chief executive Tom Glocer suggested his own addendum to Clayton Christensen's theories in The Innovator's Dilemma about why it is hard for large companies to innovate as much as their smaller competitors. While…
Exchange Reality
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Editor's Letter: Was the financial gain worth all the pain?
I met a technology consultant the other day for lunch in the West End. It was memorable for two reasons: first, we ate at Gaucho, a restaurant specialising in Argentine beef in a Nosferatu -esque atmosphere, which, while I am no ardent carnivore, was…
Ready for the recovery
The worst may not be over, but things will definitely get better. By Phil Albinus
Avoiding the Carr Wreck
I finally have gotten my hands on a copy of Nicholas Carr's The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google and I can see why this is literary napalm in the IT community.
Regulators Bare Their Gums
Perhaps the only thing greater than data professionals' curiosity about which businesses competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic would force Thomson and Reuters to divest before blessing the proposed merger of the two data giants is their…
Bagging Elephants
Now that many plan sponsors have changed their policies, allowing their asset managers to invest in listed equity options, the options markets faces interesting challenges in servicing these new institutional orders.
Explore Your Options
Too many options: not just a problem for those who can't decide what to buy their valentine, but also for anyone serious about trading in the options markets today-and dealing with the sheer volume of data generated by US options trading.
The Rainbow Connection
Raise your hand if you truly were surprised by the announcement of the formation of Project Rainbow, the new bank-backed multilateral trading facility (MTF) that is targeting interest rate swaps (IRSes).
What's in a Name?
Is content still king? In this age of low latency, is speed everything? Or, with everyone trying to make the most of the market's merger and acquisition frenzy, is branding the next big thing?