Editors letter
Opening Cross: Data Is as Much About Getting Together as Getting It Together!
This week, all eyes will be on London and Inside Market Data’s European Financial Information Summit, which promises its usual array of lively panel discussions and roundtable debates. These events—which IMD holds in key market centers worldwide…
West Lothian Looks Simple Now
Scotland makes the biggest decision in its history, come Thursday.
Buy Them! Buy Them All!
ICE's acquisitive mood and T2S lead this week's coverage.
Opening Cross: Teenage Takeover!
I can still recall my first days at then-Risk Waters Group in 2000 as a greenhorn researcher working on Risk magazine and FX Week, trying to quickly learn new industries and lingo, while at the same time trying to hide my inexperience. One of my earliest…
A Legend Returns—But to a Different World
This week, Michael Bloomberg's officially-announced return to the company bearing his name surprised many. Welcoming him back, Tim says, is easy — the difference he'll make requires a little imagination.
Nobody Reads These Things Anyway, Right?
Deutsche's FCA penalty leads this week's coverage.
September 2014: Change Is the Only Constant
Machine learning and artificial intelligences are reshaping algorithms into adaptive programs that can adjust on the fly, which Victor says could end up all but eradicating losses.
BlackRock's Aladdin: More Powerful Than Politics?
Bold, hyperbolic statements about technology are commonplace in 2014, whether reveling in its potential or damning its influence. Tim examines one such argument that takes the latter bent, relating to BlackRock's massive Aladdin platform.
Little Boxes
One of the big perks of this job is the amount of people that you get to meet and speak to, all over the world. A case in point was talking to the president of the Taiwan Stock Exchange this morning, last week it was a conversation with a technology…
Gaining Momentum, In Two Flavors
A new analytics product focused on momentum trading leads this week's content, while a different kind of confidence, and some welcomed calmness, settles in as the second EMIR reporting deadline hits.
Breaking Down the Doors
China Connect, algorithm libraries and the Buy-Side Technology Awards lead this week's coverage.
Opening Cross: Sun, Summer, and the Pursuit of the ‘Simple’ Life
The world of market data is encumbered by a multitude of complexities. Not only is the business of data complex, but so is the data itself, and so too are the underlying markets and instruments that require such complex datasets. So key to preventing…
Can Tier-One Sell Sides Adopt a Buy-Side Mentality?
Quite often, obvious technical differences are highlighted between the largest global investment banks and the smaller buy-side shops who are their clients. Does a proclivity for that kind of thinking ultimately hold them back? Tim tries out a football…
Opening Cross: Enterprise Messaging to Enterprise Management—It’s About Broadening Appeal
Pity my colleagues in London: Last Tuesday, workmen severed an ISDN cable in the street outside our office, cutting off all internet, phone, email and server access. Then on Wednesday, an explosion at an adjacent power sub-station forced a building…
August 2014: Start Me Up
There are no prizes for anyone identifying the August issue of Waters as the “start-up” issue. That is down to coincidence as opposed to design. Marina Daras travelled to Israel recently with the view to visiting a number of the country’s technology…
Rise of the Machines
Machine learning and the Waters Rankings lead this week's coverage.
Opening Cross: Consumer Power, Or the Power of Consumer Data?
It has always seemed ironic to me that the building at 628 Broadway in New York City, now an Urban Outfitters store, was once home to the New York Mercantile Exchange, trading the very materials used to make the clothes sold in the building’s current…
Don't Cry For HFT, Argentina
This week, Argentina was declared to be in technical default after years of legal wrangling and misfortunes, with even greater consequences possible for the debt markets overall. Those working on HFT concerns should take heed: beware of the details.
The Wheel Keeps on Turning
Thoughts on recovery in the fi-tech space to open the week.
Opening Cross: Strength in Numbers—A History Lesson in Surviving The Data Purge
This week, our New York office has been gearing up for Purge Day, when we purge our desks of papers and items that we no longer need, and in return the company buys us a pizza lunch. In preparing for Purge Day, clearing out a closet of old copies of…
Internal Dark Pools—Into Darkness?
This week, trading on Barclays' US-based LX platform fell off a cliff after a lawsuit was filed alleging high-frequency (HFT) manipulation at the venue. Is the buy side finally spooked?
Walter Mitty Does Wall Street
Waters Rankings winners and hedge fund cyber-attack scenarios lead this week's coverage.
Opening Cross: Data Dilemmas Will Be Just Fine... If You Read the Fine Print
The financial markets are full of nostalgic tales about how deals used to be done on a handshake in the street. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately, depending on your point of view—those days are gone. Now, there’s a paper trail for everything—in fact,…
Midnight Hour for European AIFMs
The deadline for applying for authorization under the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) arrives on July 22, and one recent measure suggests a few firms out there are still sweating bullets. But, Tim wonders, is that such a bad thing?