Opinion
The new crackdown
Just as the yoke of compliance was starting to lift, it looks set to come crashing down once again. In the years following the passage of tight regulatory laws such as Know Your Customer, the Patriot Act, and Sarbanes-Oxley, US lawmakers and financial…
More window dressing
The talk-loudly-and-carry-a-small-stick app-roach is alive and well in Washington DC, particularly when it comes to investor protections. The latest egregious example: The US Treasury Department plans to put its weight behind two sets of recently…
Where Has All the Money Gone?
Money certainly hasn't found its way to New York City. According to a recently published report by industry analyst firm Celent, brokerage IT spending in North America from 2008 through 2011 will grow at an anemic rate of 1.3 percent, which is down from…
When Weighing Your Options, Less is More
Data consumers often liken their applications to a baseball catcher's mitt, attempting to catch the high-speed data being pitched at them by US options exchanges. And in the example of options data, just like a pitcher who can keep his pitch count low,…
Congratulations, Mr Glocer, It's a Boy!
... Or is it a girl? Actually, it's a multi-billion-dollar monster. Last year's illicit affair has at last blossomed into marriage, and-after a lengthy gestation-the birth of a new entity and the patter of tiny feet.
Green Is Not Optional
According to a recent report presented to the U.S. Congress, the growth in IT power demand over the next decade will require the construction of 10 full-scale power plants just to meet it. Those numbers are just for IT and do not consider growth in…
The End of the World as We Know It?
This Thursday, April 17, Radio City music hall in New York will reverberate to the sound of change-not next season's Rockettes lineup, but rather the changing of the guard at Thomson and Reuters, which complete their mega-merger this week.
Gliding on the Wind of Change
Having spent three years covering the US markets, last week's inaugural Amsterdam Financial Information Summit helped me better understand some of the differences-and similarities-between how the US and European markets are adapting to change.
The March of the MTFs
It was only a matter of time before the leading ECNs would turn their sights to the European market. Within the next six months, Bats Trading expects its London-based multilateral trading facility (MTF) to be up and running in London ( see story, this…
Offshoring's Domestic Front
With recession fears and the U.S. dollar's decline, India's IT firms weigh increasing their focus on their local market.
Integration: The Key to Enterprise Data Management
Financial institutions are increasingly investing in enterprise data management solutions, writes Mario Orphanou, product manager at Odyssey Financial Technologies
Credit Crisis Curse
Editor's Letter
Jack of all trades
There is little doubt that large numbers of traditional asset managers and hedge funds have made the move to multi-asset trading in a near- or real-time environment but as Harrell Smith argues, not all supporting technologies were created equal
Turquoise ready to ruffle feathers
Turquoise, the pan-European share trading platform gearing up to launch later this year, is aiming to open up the European exchange market that, in Turquoise's view, has to date been the province of quasi-monopolies that pass on overly high costs to end…
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…
Know the Flows
Information on the flow of assets between asset classes, sectors and regions is increasingly being used as a tactical data input for investment strategies. But does it have the value to become a mainstream indicator of market movements?
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…