Insights
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Reforming the SIP with Odd Lots and Competing Consolidators
With attention riveted on volatile stock and bond markets and the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, brokers and asset managers are focused on keeping up with the high volumes of market data and trades. With so many unknowns, the situation could impact market data reforms to overhaul the securities information processor or SIP.
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In Volatile Markets, Trading Technology Matters
At times like these, two major factors come into play: first, your trading technology’s ability to process and manage the data coming into the platform, and secondly, how well-established automation is within the firm.
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FX Algos Gain Adoption on the Buy Side as Best Ex and TCA Fuel Change
With the proliferation of algorithms in currency markets and regulatory pressure to prove best execution, buy-side trading desks are adopting algorithms to source liquidity and lower trading costs in FX trading.
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Unlocking Data Silos to Reach the Promised Land of Smart Data Analytics
With mountains of market data, historical prices, and transactions data stored in disparate systems, securities and investment firms are shifting from a focus on collecting data to extracting value from it. But the problem is that most of these huge and large data sets are siloed in legacy system architectures.
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A Year in Review: Top FlexAdvantage Blog Posts in 2019
Topics such as market data costs, natural language processing, MiFID II research unbundling, Algo Wheels, exchange startups, market structure, dark pools, and desktop interoperability, resonated with the readers of the FlexAvantage industry blog.
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Revised SEC Rule 606 Shines the Light on Order Routing Disclosures
The revamped SEC 606 regulation requires more extensive disclosures by broker dealers about the handling and routing of institutional customer orders including the average rebates the broker received from, and fees the broker paid to, trading venues.
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Exchange Landscape Gearing Up for Expansion in 2020
As a sign of the evolving U.S. equity trading landscape, two startups and one options exchange operator plan to launch as many as three new exchange platforms in 2020, and a fourth could be waiting in the wings. Emphasizing the need for competition and innovation in US equity market structure, new entrants have downplayed the increased connectivity costs and additional fragmentation of orders across trading venues.
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Data Analytics Overtakes Big Data
While the concept of big data has focused on the problem of collecting and processing vast quantities of data i— the trend is moving toward data analytics.
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AI: Natural Language Processing and the Battle for Unstructured Data
Increasingly banks are turning to the field of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to extract valuable information from voice, documents, and audio to boost productivity on trading desks. It’s all part of a broader push to gain efficiencies by training machines and bots to analyze language, capture insights, and replace manual tasks and drive workflows further downstream.
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Algo Wheels Spinning into Futures
Algo wheels have become a popular technology in equities trading, but now there are signs that algo wheels are expanding beyond equities into multiple asset classes such as futures.
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U.S. to Study Effects of MiFID II Research Unbundling
U.S. lawmakers authorized a study focusing on the provision of investment research for small issuers, a sign they are wary of the U.S. adopting the European Union’s MIFID II unbundling rules which have brought sweeping changes to the research business.