Opinion
Setting the Record Straight
In the final scene of Billy Wilder's classic movie Some Like it Hot , when Jack Lemmon discards his wig and reveals to ageing playboy Joe E. Brown-who has been unwittingly wooing Lemmon-that he's a man disguised as a woman, Brown merely shrugs and says, …
The Dog Days of Summer
Does anything good happen in August? As I write this, the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing are under threat from the Turkistan Islamic Party. At the same moment, Russian tanks are rolling into the capital of the breakaway Georgian province of Southern…
The Case for Consolidated Market Feeds
In this age of low-latency direct feeds, consolidated market feeds such as the CTS, CQS and Opra are viewed more as necessary evils than sexy must-haves. Yet not only do these feeds remain basic essentials for firms to gain a consolidated view of an…
A New Paradigm for Data Strategies
With capital markets facing a stream of new data that is growing in complexity, density and speed by the day, outsourcing underlying technology is one option for firms designing data strategies that encompass a broad spectrum of requirements. By Sinan…
Who's Number Three?
It seems SunGard CEO Cris Conde is looking to upend the troika of the major standalone sell-side order management system (OMS) providers with SunGard's announcement late last week that it intends to purchase competitor GL Trade.
Editor's letter - Are you going soft?
The bicycle industry has changed a lot in recent years. Back in the mid-eighties, before frame manufacturers started dabbling with aluminium and carbon fibre, frames were made almost exclusively of steel, a material that required precision and experience…
Good Works, Great Fun
EDITOR'S LETTER
How to Implement the Ultimate Fair Value Program
The basic ambition behind any fair value service should be to provide a fully transparent calculation, writes Telekurs Financial's Lydia Galasean
Compliant derivatives
After 85 years at the heart of Wall Street, Bear Stearns is no more. But even before the highest profile and most celebrated casualty of the credit crunch closed its doors, the inevitable questions about who was next in line were already doing the rounds…
Closing the Gap
At the risk of repeating a trite cliché, India really is a land of contrasts. According to a recent report from the Indian National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, four of the world's ten wealthiest billionaires are Indian citizens,…
Today's SEC: Helping you un-break the law
As the US economy stares down the abyss of a de facto recession, in no small part due to lack of meaningful regulatory oversight of dubious financial practices, it appears the Securities and Exchange Commission's leadership has no intention of altering…
Portfolio Desks On the Block
For the past few months NYSE Euronext has been working with Pragma Financial Systems to provide floor traders on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) access to trading algorithms that will put their orders on par with outside orders ( see story, this issue…
Come Together
I'm not good at dealing with change-at least according to my last performance review-and the only major change I have to deal with is Inside Market Data 's upcoming move to new offices closer to Wall Street next month. So spare a thought for those data…
Bloomberg's All-Star Deal
In the lead-up to last week's annual All-Star baseball game in New York, a row erupted between Red Sox pitcher Jonathan Papelbon and the New York press corps about who was the better closer and should end the game-Papelbon or revered Yankees pitcher…
Attack of the Pods
Having covered technology for several years, it should come as no surprise that I'm a slight science fiction geek. When I hear the term "pods," I don't think of Steve Jobs' musical creations, but rather Donald Sutherland's shriek from the 1978 remake of…
No News Is Good News?
As I stumbled past the long line of technophiles camped out to purchase their iPhone 3Gs, it reminded me a bit of my childhood growing up with a large extended Irish-American family prior to the ubiquity of e-mail, texting and instant messaging. My…
There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
... But is there such a thing as free market data? For retail investors, yes, as a result of recent initiatives to bring real-time data to the masses by exchanges including Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, which both recently launched freely…
Passports, Please
Every time I land at London Heathrow Airport, there are two things I know I'm not going to enjoy. First is schlepping a week's worth of luggage and a laptop bag through that underground corridor from Terminal 3 to the Heathrow tube stop on the Piccadilly…
What Commuters Can Learn From Market Data
Regular IMD readers will know how I like to use analogies to illustrate issues relating to market data. So, with many of our US colleagues heading off for long weekends away to celebrate the July 4 holiday, I'd like to share some musings that occurred to…
Market Data Sourcing Challenges for Alpha-Seekers
With markets becoming fragmented and more competitive, the way that firms source market data is becoming a key component in the search for competitive advantage. By John Panzica, general manager of global financial markets at Reliance Globalcom
Editor's letter - Please tell me when it's all over
Switching on the TV in the evening has become more than a little scary. Last night on CNBC a Wall Street analyst succinctly illustrated the escalating energy predicament facing the West:
Risk tech enjoys a mini boom By Emily Fraser
Financial firms caught with their trousers down in the wake of the subprime mortgage meltdown continue to spend significant amounts of money on technology. According to a recent poll conducted by IBM and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets…
Suicide is painless - but what about usury? By Stewart Eisenhart
What do you do as an industry if you find yourself incessantly hounded by investors, analysts, and (to varying degrees) regulators to provide more transparency into your processes and operations in the wake of pricing debacles, a credit market collapse,…