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A Year in Review: Top Blogs in 2021
We covered topics such as retail order routing and the debate over payment for order flow (PFOF). We examined the resurgence in alternative trading systems (ATSs), the rise of outsourced trading desks for the buy side, and efforts to regulate fixed-income trading platforms as registered venues.
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Will Overnight Trading Evolve into a 24-Hour Stock Market?
Despite past attempts to usher in 24-hour trading in U.S. equities, a major catalyst behind the current momentum has been the round-the-clock trading occurring in cryptocurrencies which has raised expectations for retail investors. The rise of new electronic trading venues could test these assumptions, though issues such as liquidity and settlement time frames may need to be addressed first.
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ATS Innovators Speed Up Matches to Discover Algo-Liquidity
Dark pools catering to institutions have evolved with innovative methods of matching orders and faster matching engines to avoid moving the price after the trade. It’s also a sign of the intense competition brewing between off-exchange venues seeking to sign up brokers and institutions.
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Facing Economic Headwinds, the Buy Side Turns to Outsourcing
With the demand for increased efficiency and fee pressure from low-cost passive index strategies, in recent years, outsourced trading desks have gained traction with small and mid-sized asset managers. Among the benefits are the economies-of-scale that can be achieved because the capability is set up to act as an inhouse execution desk for multiple buy sides.
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SEC Revives Payment for Order Flow Debate
If PFOF is potentially curtailed or prohibited, it could impact retail investors that have benefited from commission-free trading as well as the wholesale market-maker model of matching retail orders through internalization.
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Digital Markets Propagate in the New Economy
Will the trading desk of the future hook into online marketplaces that trade fractionalized shares of real estate, or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) based on art, sports or music?
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Data Dominates Buy-Side Approach to FX Trading
Senior buy-side traders offered differing views on the definition of high-touch and low-touch trading in foreign exchange (FX) at a roundtable in May, shedding light on efforts to rank their brokers and incorporate data analytics …
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GameStop Saga Puts Focus on Inaccessible Liquidity
Now experts are saying that ‘inaccessible liquidity’ is costing institutional investors three times as much in transaction costs, and it’s affecting the calculations made by their algorithms such as volume weighted average price (VWAP) and percentage of volume (POV), which rely on overall volumes.
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Alternative Data’s Rising Star in COVID Era
With everyone seeking up-to-the minute data, analysts and investment managers utilized foot traffic from geolocation data to quantify retail sales and disruptions to the global supply chain. The rise of new marketplaces should remove some of the onerous work of sourcing, collecting, and normalizing data feeds from multiple vendors.
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Multiple Protocols Boost Liquidity in E-Trading of U.S. Treasury Bonds
Another trend has been the mergers and acquisitions of exchanges and bond trading platforms, and joint ventures between fintech companies and fixed-income venues. Exchanges have been acquiring fixed-income venues over the past few years, which is also driving the consolidation of liquidity pools and e-trading protocols.