Insights
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Will the Buy-Side Become Fixed Income Liquidity Providers?
Due to liquidity constraints, are buy-side fixed income traders prepared to play a more active role as price- makers on electronic trading platforms? FlexTrade’s Ivy Schmerken investigates.
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TCA Trends: Venue Analysis Tops Buy-Side Priorities
It’s no secret that institutional traders are utilizing transaction cost analysis (TCA) for equities trading as a tool for measuring execution quality and reducing slippage against trading benchmarks. But now that TCA has matured in equities, the question is where is TCA moving next?
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A Tale of Two Pilots: Maker-Taker and the Tick Pilot
Senators conducting a hearing on U.S. equity market structure earlier this month vented their frustrations at the slow pace of regulatory change in equity market structure reforms. At the March 3 hearing, lawmakers repeatedly cited delays in developing the consolidated audit trail, or CAT system, for market-wide surveillance, questioning to what extent progress has been made.
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TCA: Bridging the Gap Between Equities and FX
Transaction cost analysis has been the Holy Grail of best execution in equities trading, but the evolution of TCA in foreign exchange trading must consider the OTC nature of currency markets.
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A Hard Look at Last Look in Foreign Exchange
The debate over ‘last look’ in foreign exchange trading has resurfaced in 2016 as regulators continue to eye the practice and investors worry about slippage and potential market abuse. Regulators are said to be scrutinizing FX dealing platforms that contain last look, a controversial practice that enables market makers to delay or reject trades from customers after they’ve agreed to a quoted price.
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Best Execution FX: A Shifting Landscape
As European regulators eye the FX market, the onus is falling on buy-side firms to develop best execution FX standards and take more control over their trades.
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The SEC’s ATS Transparency Rules: What’s the Impact?
The SEC’s new proposed rules on transparency in alternative trading systems are going to shine a light on the operations of dark pools, ensuring fair access to information for all market participants.
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FX Liquidity and Technology — An Ecosystem in Flux
Change is accelerating in the electronic foreign exchange markets. With the fixing scandal and the currency rigging cases resulting in multi-billion dollar bank fines, investors are choosing a mix of liquidity providers or venues in an FX ecosystem that has become more complex.
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Buy-Side Backs Block Trading Venues
Buy side firms have shown signs of impatience with U.S. equity market structure. While they are leery of radical reforms, institutions have seeded a number of trading venues lately.
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Equity Market Structure: The Buy Side View
Buy side traders debating the pros and cons of the U.S. equity market structure recently gave high marks to the computerized stock trading landscape, though it didn’t take long for concerns to surface.
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Swap Execution Facilities: What’s Next?
The US ecosystem for swap execution facilities continues to evolve, but not as rapidly as regulators and lawmakers anticipated. Despite the shift to electronic trading, some observers question if swaps trading has reached a new equilibrium. The vision of a buy-side trader sitting in front of a screen with the ability to anonymously click on streaming prices from multiple SEFs could be several years away. However, new liquidity providers could be catalysts for change in market structure, suggested speakers at a recent webinar.
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SEF Trading: Challenges and Regulatory Hurdles
The regulatory overhaul of the OTC derivatives market has brought mandatory clearing and electronic trading to standardized swaps, but many say the market structure is stuck, citing regulatory ambiguity and separate liquidity pools.