Opinion
Max Bowie: Colleagues, Consolidators, Where Are They Now?
As Waters bids farewell to one colleague and welcomes a new one in his place, Max wonders where the vendors have gone from the data industry’s glory days, and who will replace them.
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…
Big-Time Data Terminology
Larger-than-life terms aren't necessarily the best way to describe data management issues. As an S&P data strategist points to integration and scalability concerns, IRD's editor writes that quality and consistency are really what it's all about
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?
AIFMD: How Independent Are Your Valuations?
In his last column before leaving Inside Reference Data for pastures new, Nicholas Hamilton considers the challenges of complying with the European Union's Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive, which had a compliance deadline this week
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?
Cloud Choices
Security, accuracy, risk and cost are all factors to consider when deciding to use cloud computing resources for data functions, and how to use these resources.
Swing Löw, Sweet Chariot
It's a good Monday to be German, although perhaps less so if you're in Buenos Aires right now.
Opening Cross: Looking for Data (and Beer) in All the Right Places
Over the July 4 long weekend, I strolled around the new residential skyscrapers built along the Long Island City waterfront, and the redeveloped Gantry Plaza State Park overlooking the East River and the UN building. A few blocks inland, in a parking lot…
The Value Of Sharing
Collaboration and cooperation, along with openness to innovative ways of handling data, are valuable assets that data operations professionals should be willing to use.
Parsing Fintech's Whimsical Name Game
Tim muses on a subject—company names—that has confounded him for most of his time covering financial technology. Does a strange moniker make a difference?
Data. Broadcast Yourself.
While YouTube might not have any direct links to the financial services industry, Brian Sentance argues that the social media phenomenon’s model, which allows users to control the information they publish and consume, is already emerging across the…
Lessons of Facebook's Overreach
Financial industry firms should recognize the value of data they collect and analyze, and tread more carefully as a result
Innovation, Singularities and Saturation
Taking cliché out of the equation.
Open Platform: The ‘Hidden Tax’ of Index Data
As index use has grown, so have the ways in which entrenched index providers are extracting revenues from licensing their indexes and underlying data. But with cost still a key concern, with the popularity of exchange-traded funds growing, and with…