Opinion
Stifling "innovation"
Now that the adults are set to retake charge of the US federal government next January, the likelihood of more substantive regulation of the financial services industry has become all the more probable, even though we still have only vague notions of…
Gobble, Gobble
If you're reading this over coffee and turkey bagel after the Thanksgiving holiday, chances are you're also facing a week of turkey sandwiches, turkey salads, turkey chili and turkey meatloaf, which just goes to prove that you can have too much of a good…
Where Have All the Margins Gone?
I spoke last week with Brent Weisenborn, president and CEO of the Agora-X ECN, about the launch of his firm's new platform ( see story, page 1 ) and his description of a "tsunami of regulation coming out of Washington, D.C." caught my attention. It is an…
Latency Takes the Lead
There was a time when low latency was just an issue of plumbing in the dealing room or datacenter to speed up trading flows, but market fragmentation changed all that. Now it is strategic. Distance implies latency. If you use smart order routing in a…
One Platform to Rule Them All
Since the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Euronext merged to form NYSE Euronext, the exchange operator has aimed to deploy a single global trading platform across all of its exchanges. DWT European reporter Cecilia Bergamaschi sits down with Anthony…
Paging the CLO
A little over a year ago, a couple exchange officials introduced me to a new C-level job description in the industry-chief optimization officer. The role, as it was explained to me, is to ensure that all trading systems within the investment bank deliver…
I Now Pronounce You Merged!
I'll admit, I sometimes get a little teary-eyed at weddings. There's something particularly moving about watching a happy couple exchange vows and prepare for a long future together. So you can imagine how excited I was at a sudden uptick in M&A activity…
A Sign of Eastern Promise?
One of the issues under fire at last month's Asia-Pacific Financial Information Conference in Hong Kong was China's proposals to effectively create a state-run monopoly on the flow of financial news and market data into the country, in an apparent effort…
Finding the Secret Ingredient
It seems that my editor's letter in DWT 's recent latency special report ( DWT , Nov. 10) in which I discuss the trend of hiring IT staff outside from the financial verticals and what impact that would have for organizations has gotten some push back…
Stand Up, Joe the Data Manager
Last week, Americans went to the polls to elect a new president, and voted for a platform of hope and change. So now that the election is finally over, I hope my evenings will change from being dominated exclusively by my fiance's recent diet of Wolf…
Welcome to the Brave New World
It seems clear that now that Barack Obama has been elected the 44 th president of the U.S., things will change. In the realm of geo-politics, there seems to be a breath of fresh air and hope on the global stage. However, now that the Democratic Party has…
As DJIA Sees Uptick, Indexes Face Change
A chill blew into New York City last week, blowing the leaves from the trees, and apparently blowing a wind of change into that key economic indicator, the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Dow closed up 889.35 points (a 10.88 percent gain) on Tuesday…
The E-Discovery Challenge
Open Platform
Not End Times
Opinion
The Crash of '08
EDITOR'S LETTER
Information, Information, Information
Dilip Kumar and Michelle Warra suggest how to improve data quality
Editor's Letter - Once bitten twice shy
The speed and volatility of the changes we've experienced in the global equity markets over the past few weeks have been nothing short of spectacular. The Vix, the CBOE's volatility index, reached an all-time high of 81.17 on October 16, although by the…
Fear and populism
Plummeting stock prices, rising numbers of house foreclosures and steadily growing unemployment rates have led to loud calls for increased regulation. But countries should avoid knee-jerk reactions to the current financial crisis. By Emily Fraser
Interactive hedging
A low-inflation environment and an ageing population proved to be a fatal combination for pure-play bond and equity portfolios - the returns expected by corporate investors simply did not materialise. And so the days of target-based long portfolios have…
The hedge fund bubble
Now that the numbers have come in, it's safe to say that most of us have had better Septembers. By many accounts, worries among hedge fund managers that their investors would opt for redemptions in the face of uglier and uglier market conditions appear…
Happy Birthday, Mifid!
As coverage of the global financial meltdown and the U.S. general election reaches a fever pitch, it's easy to forget that just 12 short months ago, the E.U. rolled out the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid).
Reaching for The Clouds
If you listen to financial technologists willing to speak in public, it sounds as if there is still a debate raging on whether investment banks and other financial institutions should adopt cloud computing. It reminds me of the arguments long ago about…