Opinion
Redeemable Shares: A Cautionary Tale
Redeemable shares might be a tax-efficient method to distribute capital, but they can be a headache for firms trying to automate corporate actions processing, say Richard Ryndak and Kristina Kulle at Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
A Question of Time
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Editor's letter: The link between Van Gogh and CDOs
The notion of spending large fortunes, equivalent to the GDP of a small African country, on a Van Gogh painting, is frankly, absurd. The intrinsic value of a Van Gogh - Sunflowers, Irises, The Starry Night or otherwise - is only a few dollars. Paintings…
The year of hedging dangerously
As the calendar winds down, I don't know whether it's more reassuring to look ahead or to look back. This was a rough year. While not entirely an annus horribilis , it was one that traders, IT staffers and industry observers will remember for the lessons…
A fragmented future
The introduction of multi-lateral trading facilities, crossing networks and electronic communication networks are starting to hurt Europe's well-established exchanges. This phenomenon is likely to become somewhat more acute with the recent introduction…
The end of an illusion
It's getting ugly out there. That's hardly surprising news, but still arguably shocking. The Great Credit Crunch of 2007 has now officially expanded beyond the first wave of casualties - hedge funds over-exposed to shadily structured mortgage-backed…
Thanksgiving and Turkeys
Thanksgiving, the quintessential American holiday, stems from the first harvest gathered by British pilgrim settlers after being taught how to hunt and grow native crops in the New World by Native Americans. As the story goes, having survived their first…
Achtung, Baby!
Retired Formula 1 racing champ Michael Schumacher returned to a Ferrari for testing duties last week, and promptly put his younger rivals in the shade. However, Schumi is the exception to the rule: in the market data industry, older inevitably means…
No Time for Downtime (or Sub-Prime)
Having spent the last week complaining to anyone who would listen about missing luggage and a six-hour stopover in Heathrow Airport on my way back to the US, the glitch that disrupted trading and data distribution from the London Stock Exchange last week…
Specialization Takes Command
Electronic trading is getting more difficult. There are just too many new technologies and strategies to choose from, with algorithms everywhere-hundreds of them-at every stage of the investment and trading process. The number of venues has also exploded…
The Lion City Roars
The big news in Singapore last week wasn’t our prestigious Asia-Pacific Financial Information Summit, or even the influx of foreign cash (and resulting linen shortage) as I raced around the city trying to replace my luggage (which apparently decided to…
At Your Service
In-house use of SOA-based technology combined with sophisticated vendor-supplied business services for data management is on the rise, says Dale Richards, CEO of LakeFront Data Ventures
It's Raining Shoes
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
End of Days?
It is November and the end is not in sight. Even though the European Union has been talking about Mifid for some time now, the financial news media and industry experts have instead focused on projects such as Boat, Turquoise and Submarine, and the…
Taking the random route
Traditional ways of measuring investment skill range from the straightforward (looking at the portfolio’s performance relative to the rest of the market over the last one, five and 10 years) to the quant-driven, through to the full machinery of…
Editor’s Letter: Concentrating on the little things
Most of you are no-doubt aware that the IRB 2007 Rugby World Cup has just finished. This is somewhat fortuitous as it affords me the opportunity to indulge my journalistic passion of sports commentary/analysis, the area of journalism on which I cut my…
Asia Data: Prepping for Take-off, or Flying High?
By the time you read this, I—along with a few of my industry colleagues—will be making the long, long flight to Singapore for Inside Market Data’s Asia-Pacific Financial Information Summit, to gauge how much the market has evolved over the past 12 months.
Mapping Market and Reference Data
Whenever I return from New York to London-for example, for our European Financial Information Summit-I realize there's a certain something that I miss about the old country. Maybe it's the rolling countryside, cream teas and postal strikes. Maybe it's…
Taking Control
Hands up-who's ever downloaded a song from an online file-sharing program without paying for it? Yet how many of you are scrupulous about data audits and appalled by data piracy? Ultimately, we're talking about the same action on a different scale. And…
New York Sweeps Boston... Sort Of...
For the benefit of non-US readers, we're in the Post-season. The baseball season is over, and the winners now battle it out for the World Series-the Cubs, Indians, Diamondbacks, Angels, Rockies and Phillies, and of course arch-rivals the Yankees and Red…
MiFID's New World Order
As the Nov. 1 MiFID deadline draws near, it is becoming clear that it will take much more time and work to clarify what the new rules mean, and how investors, managers and brokers will behave in the post-MiFID world order. By Bill Haney, European…
Need for Speed: Advice in the Thin Client/Fat Client Debate
Developing a trading system is like trying to build a race car: The faster you want it to go, the larger-and potentially heavier-the engine can become. This is the dilemma of building a trading system: the need for speed versus the desire to avoid…