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Ways to Make the Financial Crisis More Fun; Unexpected Uses of the BlackBookBerry
October 31, 2008 @ 08:25 AM | By Penny Crosman

Earlier this month, David Letterman offered ideas for how to put the “fun” back in “financial crisis” and this week, the gang at Doogleheimer & Schmitt released a new video about the BlackBookBerry.

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NYSE Harnesses News Filtering Technology to Retain, Attract Issuers
October 30, 2008 @ 02:05 PM | By Penny Crosman

In its latest act of self-reinvention, to compete with and differentiate itself from among the growing throng of electronic exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange yesterday rolled out a new, free market data, news and alerting service for NYSE listed companies called Market Access Center.

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Is the bail out deal 'too sweet' for banks? (video)
October 30, 2008 @ 08:29 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

When financially sound banks (those not burdened with so-called toxic assets) are running to the Fed to take part in the bail out, is that a sign that the deal is too sweet for the banks? Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein explains why the government has a hard time enforcing lending rules in banks, and why it will take time to get the economic system moving again, in this video from MSNBC.

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(Some) brokerages are finally getting into YouTube (video)
October 29, 2008 @ 05:14 PM | By Melanie Rodier

While entertainment and consumer product companies have been dabbling in social media since at least 2005, financial firms have been slow to react.

But in the last year, retail brokerages in particular and banks have increasingly been using social networking to communicate with clients, according to a new report by marketing and research firm, Corporate Insight. continued...
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Bank IT Execs Go to the Web First for Technology Information
October 29, 2008 @ 09:58 AM | By Penny Crosman

How do financial services executives shop for new technology? Forrester senior analyst Ellen Carney completed a report today that looks into bank IT executives’ research methods and found that their number one digital media source of technology information is “vendor, industry/trade or professional web sites” (cited by 90% of bank IT executive respondents). The next five digital media resources to which they turn are: web-based events or webinars (81%); interactive media such as podcasts, video, online demos, and rich internet applications (74%); email or electronic newsletters (69%); discussion forums, online communities, or social network sites (62%); and blogs from vendors, peers, or industry commentators (52%).

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Three weeks on, how is the bailout going? (audio)
October 28, 2008 @ 10:49 AM | By Melanie Rodier

Three weeks after the $700 billion bailout package, big name banks are finally getting their money, while a number of smaller regional banks have also signed up for federal cash. Economist Doug Elmendorf at the Brookings Institutions takes stock of the bailout and talks about how he expects banks to react to their cash injection, in a Marketplace segment from American Public Media.

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Content Analytics for Individual Investors
October 27, 2008 @ 10:52 AM | By Melanie Rodier

As we continue to anxiously follow the wildly fluctuating stock market, YellowBrix, a provider of content analytics, announced the release of RightTrade, a service targeted at individual investors that makes predictions before the market opens each day and tracks the real-time sentiment of any publicly traded company.

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Natalie Portman, Rashida Jones, the Trumps Speak Out on the Fiinancial Crisis
October 24, 2008 @ 07:26 AM | By Penny Crosman

Natalie Portman and Rashida Jones offer a solution to America's financial crisis and Donald and Ivanka share their insights on the economy. Also, the catchy song, "You've Got the Fed," and a faux news article about the NYSE from The Onion.

Natalie Portman and Rashida Jones Speak Out

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The Sky Didn't Fall on Lehman Swaps, Yet (audio)
October 24, 2008 @ 07:13 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Hundreds of billions in losses were expected from Lehman Brothers' credit default mess. But the reality wasn't so disastrous after all -- more like $5 billion. But some experts say dealers are hiding CDS exposures and the real losses may be yet to come, according to this Marketplace segment from American Public Media.

Greenspan 'Shocked' by Breakdown (video)
October 24, 2008 @ 07:09 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said he was "shocked" by the breakdown in the credit system and told Congress the crisis was once in a century. (WSJ.com video)

While Greenspan Pans Derivatives Price Modeling, Vendors Fine-Tune Their Offerings
October 23, 2008 @ 05:05 PM | By Penny Crosman

In testimony before Congress today, Alan Greenspan placed the blame for the current financial crisis squarely on the use of mathematical models to determine value and risk for mortgage-backed securities: “It was the failure to properly price such risky assets that precipitated the crisis,” he said. “In recent decades, a vast risk management and pricing system has evolved, combining the best insights of mathematicians and finance experts supported by major advances in computer and communications technology. A Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of the pricing model that underpins much of the advance in derivates markets. This modern risk management paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year because the data inputted into the risk management models generally covered only the past two decades, a period of euphoria. Had instead the models been fitted more appropriately to historic periods of stress, capital requirements would have been much higher and the financial world would be in far better shape today, in my judgment.”

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How to build an IT department on a budget
October 22, 2008 @ 12:33 PM | By Melanie Rodier

Boston-based Veritude offers five steps to staffing an IT project on a budget through "savvy sourcing and recruiting":

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Congressman Waxman No Longer Believes Markets Can Self Regulate (audio)
October 22, 2008 @ 08:56 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Today, Congress is holding hearings on the role that the ratings agencies have played in the credit crisis. In this American Public Media Marketplace radio interview, U.S. Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, discusses some of the causes of the crisis and what new regulations might be in store of banking. Hint: Congress is no longer listening to lobbying from Wall Street that contends that the markets can self regulate.

Merrill Lynch to Cut Thousands of IT and Operations Jobs
October 21, 2008 @ 10:14 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Merrill Lynch expects to cut thousands of jobs as a result of its takeover by Bank of America, according to CEO John Thain. And most of those jobs will come from information technology, operations and "corporate functions," Thain said in a Bloomberg interview.

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Federal and NY State Prosecutors Investigating CDS Trading (NPR.org audio)
October 21, 2008 @ 08:42 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Prosecutors are looking to see if traders manipulated the prices of credit default swaps in order to weaken confidence in financial companies, according to this report from NPR’s Marketplace Morning Report. Then the traders would short the financial stocks as the prices fell.

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BofA, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley Creating Automated Hub for Loan Markets
October 20, 2008 @ 05:36 PM | By Penny Crosman

Hoping to lessen the risks associated with loan syndication and trading – particularly for distressed loans -- Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and a small handful of vendors announced today that they are developing a platform called Storm Loan Marketplace for the corporate bank loan market. Ideally, this independent hub will enable participating firms to settle loans faster, better serve their clients (by providing real-time self-service access to information), and access loan-related documents more easily.

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E-discovery requests expected to rise sharply with financial crisis
October 20, 2008 @ 03:32 PM | By Melanie Rodier

And then the investigators came marching in...

In the midst of the current financial turmoil, firms can expect a rise in the number of e-discovery requests they have to respond to, experts predict.

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Begging on Wall Street Dressed As A Banker
October 17, 2008 @ 08:10 AM | By Penny Crosman

Man goes down to Wall Street, begs as a displaced banker, and receives many donations.

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Who is Wall Street's Biggest Loser -- or Gainer?
October 16, 2008 @ 12:32 PM | By Melanie Rodier

At a time when heads are rolling on Wall Street and executives are held under closer scrutiny than ever, Lexalytics, a software and services company, has unveiled a new business leader ranking index, which allows you to constantly track top executives - and the sentiment associated with each one of them.

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HSBC Group COO Discusses Risk Management During the Financial Crisis (video)
October 16, 2008 @ 06:30 AM | By Greg MacSweeney
On the day that Lehman Brothers failed I spoke briefly with David Hodgkinson, group chief operating officer, at HSBC. Hodgkinson discusses how global banks need to work together to uncover potential risks and the role technology will play in uncovering new financial and market risks in the future. We were at the SIBOS 2008 conference in Vienna.

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One Way to De-Mystify Derivatives Valuation
October 14, 2008 @ 03:44 PM | By Penny Crosman

A primary cause of the current financial crisis, many people believe, is the difficulty -- some would say impossibility -- of properly valuing and pricing the complex derivatives on so many organizations' books. Just today, the superintendent of the New York State Insurance Department told a Congressional panel that a lack of transparency on credit-default swaps made it hard for the state to know what the broader effects of an AIG bankruptcy would be. Buyers and traders often don’t know what assets underlie credit default swaps and collateralized mortgage obligations and therefore can't easily determine what those assets are worth or how likely they are to default.

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Wells Fargo to Sell or Cut Wachovia's Investment Bank
October 13, 2008 @ 09:41 AM | By Penny Crosman

When we saw the news Friday that Wells Fargo had won the battle with Citi to buy Wachovia, we thought this strange saga had come to a happy conclusion -- Wells Fargo was going to buy all of Wachovia (not just the retail bank) and pay a better price for it without government assistance.

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BlackRock to the Rescue (NPR.org audio)
October 10, 2008 @ 10:24 AM | By Greg MacSweeney
BlackRock has long been a player in the mortgage backed securities market. In fact BlackRock's founder Laurence Fink played a large role in creating the market, according to Charles Murphy, adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business in this NPR report. Now the Tresury Department may turn to BlackRock to take on some toxic assets as it tries to unfreeze the credit markets. continued...
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Bailout Humor
October 10, 2008 @ 07:48 AM | By Penny Crosman

One of the remarkable things about this Saturday Night Live skit of a C-SPAN press conference about the bailout bill is that it seems to skewer Democrats and Republicans alike. (NBC apparently bowed to pressure from Herb and Marion Sandler to edit the skit, but only slightly.)

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Test-Driving the Latest Mobile Apps for Investment Managers
October 09, 2008 @ 02:47 PM | By Penny Crosman

While writing about the two newest mobile applications for professional investment management, from Thomson Reuters and Blue Systems, we thought, why not try them, especially since Blue Systems offered us a BlackBerry Curve loaded with its blue mobile application (to try, not keep). (A representative of the other major competitor in this space, Bloomberg, didn’t respond to requests for a test-drive login ID. However, I did use Bloomberg’s iPhone application to get a feel for the company’s offering.) The following is an unscientific but first-hand look at these applications. The three products cannot be directly compared, as the Bloomberg iPhone app is a free product for retail customers and the other two are for professional users.