Free
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,…
CEP Gains Ground
Attending last week's Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association's (Sifma's) technology management conference in midtown Manhattan, you couldn't help but notice the increased interest in complex event processing (CEP).
Let the Games Begin
This week, most North American financial technologists will descend on the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan for the annual rite of passage: the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association's (Sifma's) Technology Management Conference and…
If Not Now, When?
A little over a month ago at the DWT conference in London, a panel consisting of technologists from a number of major investment banks proclaimed the death of direct market access (DMA).
Howard's End
It is obviously difficult to gauge a person's expression over the phone, but last week it seemed that eSpeed chairman, CEO and president Howard Lutnick was sporting an ear-to-ear grin as he announced the merger of electronic inter-dealer broker eSpeed…
Stuff Happens
Back in my college days, I took a job as a file clerk at a global tier-one bank. Working in the bowels of an office tower in downtown Buffalo, N.Y., I noticed that on my manager's desk was a vanity bumper sticker that read: "T.W.H.I.P." I asked him what…
Staggering Into Summer
Late last week, the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market experienced what my family mechanic would best describe as an "oopsie."
Gaining the Edge
Technologists are all too familiar with the mantras of the trading desk heads: "I want it faster" and "I want it better."
Paying for the Grid
If there's one word buzzing through the financial services community's datacenters these days, it's "grid." Most investment banks can't get enough of them and many already have computing and data grids numbering in the tens of thousands of nodes, while…