Fund managers are showing a “significantly more positive attitude” to the imminent Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive. Initial fears appear to have subsided, the challenges and predicted costs have significantly reduced and the industry is realising the opportunities.
The explosion of data in the securities and capital markets industry – more than 30% CAGR – is rapidly becoming a problem for market participants and managing that challenge will require a disciplined approach to the development of new data architectures.
One company grateful for the flurry of publicity given to the practice of front-running orders by the publication of Michael Lewis’s book Flash Boys earlier this year is New York-based Trillium, whose Surveyor market manipulation detection tool can be used to detect the practice.
In April, US post-trade utility the DTCC called for the US settlement cycle to be moved to T+2, to bring it into line with what’s happening in the rest of the world, which is converging on T+2 settlement cycles – at different speeds.
Tullett Prebon has launched an aggregated swap data repositories data feed for the interest rate swaps market, aiming to increase price transparency in accordance with the Dodd-Frank Act.
Despite promises of change heralded by the European Commission’s upcoming MiFID II, the cost of market data in Europe is still far too high and transparency remains a serious problem, according to senior financial industry executives. Yet the arrival of the Market Model Typology standard earlier this year may provide a catalyst for change.
The outsourcing of middle and back office functions by banks and brokers is now the norm, with nearly all firms outsourcing at least part of their functions to specialist providers such as custodian banks.
Could the establishment of an enhanced outsourcing oversight capability do more for asset managers than simply satisfy the FCA? A more mature set of oversight metrics could be used to provide foresight into how the outsourcer might perform in the future.
As the European Parliament adopted MiFID II/MiFIR on 15 April, the financial services industry was left wondering what exactly the new transparency regime is going to mean. Despite a curiously low EC estimate of compliance costs, at between €512 and €732 million, it is clear that MiFID II will have a large impact on the tens of thousands of firms and counterparties that will now fall under its scope.
As Russia’s revitalised Moscow Exchange begins to command increased attention from global investment banks and hedge funds, a new direct market access service says it can unlock trading features that may not previously have been available to many international investors.
Online investment bank Saxo Bank has opened an office in Abu Dhabi to target demand for sophisticated financial services from the increasingly wealthy population of the United Arab Emirates.
Lucera Financial Infrastructures has launched LumeFX, a technology platform that aims to help market participants increase their chances of finding a fill by using a smart order router to find FX liquidity.
In a post-2008 crisis landscape dominated by regulatory reform, compliance is only part of the issue. If firms can address how they manage multiple data sets and deploy a truly enterprise-wide model, they can capitalise on the real opportunity – achieving a competitive advantage.
ICAP has launched a swap execution facility in the UK, as part of a push to dominate both the European and the US OTC derivatives markets as they are brought under new regulation.
The capital markets industry continues to be amongst the top data driven industries. Electronic trading generates millions of market messages during a given day. With diminishing returns in high-frequency trading, focus has shifted from high-speed trading to looking for patterns in large volumes of market data for financial information and use cases.
Swift’s Innotribe Startup Challenge has named the five European finalists for its annual competition, which seeks to find the best new companies in financial services and bring them to compete in the final at Sibos Boston in October.
The introduction of a financial transaction tax could mean London losing a swathe of banking business to financial centres with a lighter regulatory regime, such as Hong Kong or Singapore not to mention the logistical and technical challenges for banks.
US clearing body the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation is pushing a move to shorten the settlement cycle for the US markets to T+2, claiming support from industry bodies and firms including JP Morgan.
Broker ICAP will use high-frequency trading infrastructure from specialist Perseus Telecom as it seeks to expand its coverage across Brazil and Latin America. ICAP is already active in the region, where it connects to São Paulo and Mexico City. The Perseus LiquidPath service provides connectivity, hosting, consulting, and real time monitoring, and includes HFT services […]
One of the central characters featured in Michael Lewis’ controversial book Flash Boys, has added fuel to the fire of debate over high frequency trading by claiming that in a market with less HFT, average order sizes would get larger and long-term investors would benefit.
When the requirement brought about by the German high frequency trading act to tag algorithms comes into force this month, market participants may well feel hamstrung by the complexity of the regime – and some might wonder whether this requirement goes one step too far …
Trading firms are still struggling with the Dodd-Frank requirement for certain swaps to be traded on registered Swap Execution Facilities. According to a survey conducted by trading communications vendor IPC Systems, 60% of survey respondents said the industry as a whole was behind on meeting the deadlines on SEF trading, though only 39% said their […]
Consolidation of market infrastructure in Europe will continue, as firms choose post-trade service providers that meet their needs in terms of cost-effectiveness or value-added services. However, some of the real cost issues in Europe are still to be addressed.
Despite the deep controversy created by Michael Lewis’ expose of HFT Flash Boys, global equity markets are not broken, according to a senior capital markets panel at Trade Tech Paris 2014.
Banks should be wary of jumping the gun and assuming that SEPA implementation is a done deal. Far from being over, the task of learning to live with SEPA is just beginning.
FX trading service EBS has launched Watch EBS, a new mobile app that is designed to show users the global spot FX market in as close to real time as possible.
What is the latest technological snag affecting high-speed trading performance? In a word, jitter – a major risk, particularly when carrying out arbitrage.
While transparency may be seen as a new wonder drug that will cure all the industry’s ills, it does not come without side effects, so it was refreshing to see ESMA promoting a collaborative approach with the industry in defining the details of how MiFID II and MiFIR are implemented.
The complexity of regulatory reforms in Europe and the US are placing pressure on the industry and may catch some participants unawares.
Fixed income is a bit like the tortoise of Aesop’s fables, while equities is unquestionably the rambunctious hare. While equities finished the race towards an agency trading model many years ago, fixed income is just plodding onto the starting lines now. But a little outsourcing may provide the rocket boost the industry needs to push ahead, according to Carl James, managing director of dealing services UK at BNP Paribas.
Broadridge Financial Solutions has formed an alliance with UK software developer Lombard Risk Management under which Lombard’s collateral management system will be integrated into Broadridge’s applications and infrastructure services.
Political turbulence in the Ukraine, Russia and Turkey this year produced disagreement between senior financial industry executives at a FIX Trading Community conference in London yesterday, with some arguing that politics should not be allowed to detract from the longer-term rise of non-western economies and others arguing the opposite.
ABN Amro Clearing has launched a new global trading platform for equities and futures which it says can route clients between Asia, Europe and the US using a single FIX connection.
US broker BGC Partners and UAE government-run free zone the Dubai Multi Commodity Centre have done a deal to promote Islamic ‘Murabaha’ products, as part of a drive to turn Dubai into an Islamic finance hub. The DMCC has a trade platform called DMCC Tradeflow, which operates in the Jumeirah Lakes Towers Free Zone. A […]
Denmark’s Saxo Bank has introduced futures spread trading onto its online trading and investment platform for retail and institutional clients, in a move the bank says will give investors access to a low-volatility trading style.
Industry standards organisation the FIX Trading Community has published its guidelines for transaction cost analysis in equities, which it says will help to create a better market by clearing up the competing methodologies and definitions that are currently in use.
The Dodd-Frank Act launched the acronym SEF into the alphabet soup of modern capital markets, After three years of repeated discussions, consultations, submissions and furious wrangling, Swap Execution Facilities finally come into operation this week.
Long-only institutional investors are increasingly turning towards advanced futures trading strategies that have previously been the preserve of hedge funds and proprietary trading shops, according to a new report published by Tabb Group and Fidessa.
In the wake of scandals involving manipulation of market indices, can statistical learning theory be used to detect and fix anomalies in Libor and other market indices?
Oman’s Bank Muscat has installed tech firm Charles River’s investment management solution for its asset management business in the Arabian country, which covers equity and fixed income.
