Coronavirus (COVID-19)
End of Bloomberg’s pandemic provision sparks opportunity—for BBG and terminal upstarts
Middle- and back-office staff at banks and buy-side firms who have become accustomed to remotely accessing Bloomberg terminals at home under a disaster recovery provision could set off a surge of new remote data terminal subscriptions.
This Week: Ice, FCA, HSBC, UBS & more
A summary of the latest financial technology news.
Waters Wavelength Podcast: Episode 248 (A Merry Covid Christmas)
This week, Tony and Shen rant about dealing with Covid. No tech here, folks. Merry Christmas!
Bloomberg deploys math, not AI, to blend risk management and portfolio construction
The Mac3 GRM risk solution is live for equities users, uses no AI or machine learning, and will be rolled out to more asset classes next.
From burst to bust: What happens when cloud runs dry?
After years of initial resistance, the capital markets have come to depend heavily on the compute capacity of the public cloud. But increasing market volumes are rapidly outpacing the cloud capacity that organizations thought would be sufficient for…
Alt data’s second inning: Brace for a long M&A game
The alternative data sector is still relatively nascent, and as such buy-side firms have struggled with how best to incorporate these non-traditional sources of information. While sources say that there will be continued M&A in the market, how those…
Waters Wavelength Podcast: Episode 239 (The ‘E’ in ESG and quarantine woes)
Wei-Shen and Tony talk about climate migration and opportunities that might come about from a data perspective.
Quandl goes live with new dataset for measuring dollar value of patents
The data vendor’s product is its first that aims to sort what it believes to be truly innovative companies from the pack.
Small alt data providers feel pressure to specialize
GTCOM-US, once a bespoke alt data shop for the buy side, has narrowed its offering to focus on Chinese datasets as the largest alt data players get even bigger.
As asset managers look to Asia for alpha, analytics & visualization tools take center stage
PineBridge Investments uses economic and time-series data analytics provider Macrobond Financial to better its economics research, which supports its portfolio managers and the firm’s overall investment thesis.
Utility is success? Row brews over futures post-trade workflows
Futures market participants say standardizing trade allocations through a post-trade utility could prevent a repeat of the chaos seen in March 2020, when back-office systems fails resulted in thousands of trade breaks.
Has Covid stopped the clocks on FX timestamp efforts?
Budget reallocation may not be the only factor stalling standardization progress, say market participants.
Covid Re-Exposed Bond Market’s Liquidity Problems—Is Change Finally Here?
Three fixed-income experts look back on the bond market’s liquidity crisis spurred by the pandemic’s early days, and ponder where regulation and data-quality efforts might next lead the space.
Cohesion on ESG Standards Still Elusive, Despite Biden Win
While many expect the president-elect to take a bullish stance on environmental issues, it's unclear what a new dispensation can do for the dilemmas around ESG standards.
Crunch Time for Covid-Era Tech
Covid culture is set to continue this year, as are the associated changes to working practices in the financial markets and the technologies that support them. Max wonders what the new ‘virtual’ reality will look like in 2021 and beyond.
How Will Covid Lessons Reshape Financial Tech in 2021?
As 2020 comes to a close, Anthony looks at how firms have adjusted their short- and long-term plans in the face of the coronavirus, focusing on office space, innovation, alt data, and mental health.
A Very Covid Christmas
It’s almost Dec. 25, which means that Max Bowie is back with his annual market data Christmas-song column.
IBM Bets on Cloud & Containerization to Win Over Investment Banks
After its acquisitions of Red Hat and Promontory, IBM is looking to expand its footprint in the capital markets through containerization, as well as reg reporting in the cloud.
Jefferies' Quant Team Builds Chatbot For Faster Equities Trading
In minutes, JEFQuants compiles information from multiple sources into a unique data package based on traders' queries.
Wavelength Podcast Ep. 214: BNY Mellon's Hans Brown on Innovation
Hans delves into machine learning, moonshot projects, technical debt, and what has been learned during the pandemic.
RPA Provides ‘Quick Wins’, But at What Cost?
Banking experts urge firms to consider re-engineering a process before turning to robotic process automation.
Waters Wrap: Causal Machine Learning Represents Next Evolution of AI (Plus ESG & Innovation Issues)
Anthony looks at an interesting project using causal inference by IBM and Refinitiv, and what this latest evolution of machine learning could mean for innovation in the capital markets in the future.
Wavelength Podcast Ep. 213: Data Management in a Post-Covid World
Senior execs from Citizens Bank, Commerzbank, and Deutsche Bank discuss lessons learned during the pandemic.
IBM, Refinitiv Partner on Machine Learning Project to Better Understand Market Correlations
The two companies are in the early stages of using causal inference to help firms build machine learning models that are better able to handle disruption from events like the Covid-19 pandemic.