April 2010
OTC DERIVATIVES CLEARING Industry Working to Build Infrastructure to Enable Central Clearing of OTC Derivatives While Congress hammers out details of OTC derivatives reform, are leveraging existing third-party services to connect to central counterparty clearinghouses to enable central clearing and reduce counterparty risk. The Tangled OTC Derivatives Marketplace Rather than build connections to multiple central counterparty clearinghouses, many buy-side firms will rely on third-party services to bridge the gap in OTC derivatives clearing. RISK MANAGEMENT Post-Crisis, Banks Paying Close Attention to Vendor Risk When Choosing Tech Partners In today's environment, banks are cautious of all risk, and they increasingly are looking at how well vendors are managed and whether they are going to be able to deliver products for the long term. Vendor Risk Top of Mind for Wall Street Firms As firms search for stability in their technology partners, larger vendors have the edge. But eventually smaller, innovative providers will make a comeback. CASE STUDY Eaton Vance Overcomes Document Management's User-Interface Shortcomings During its enterprise content management deployment, Eaton Vance discovered the devil was in the user-interface details and turned to a third-party solution for help. INDUSTRY VOICE Configurable 'Ticker Processors' Accelerate Automated Trading FPGA-based computers minimize latency of feed-handling algorithms, report Edward Trexel and David Buechner of Impulse Accelerated Technologies. |
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FROM THE EDITOR The Speed of Change Unlike regulatory reform, the pace of technology innovation has quickened to help facilitate change in the financial markets. TECHNOLOGY ECONOMICS Computing Return on IT (ROIT): The Holy Grail of the Business Value of IT The development of a return on IT measure ensures that business and IT management can understand current technology investment in terms of business outcomes, according to Howard A. Rubin, founder, Rubin Worldwide. OPERATIONS New Options Symbology Phased In New options symbology was phased in on Feb. 12, seemingly without any problems. But given the far-reaching nature of the conversion for brokers, exchanges, clearing firms and vendors, some kinks still could arise. TRADING Commodities Traders Increasingly Adopt Algorithms Commodities traders increasingly are adopting algorithms, but these aren't the equity markets' automated trading strategies, as commodities algos often make room for human discretion. UPFRONT Wall Street Firms, Hedge Funds, Recruit CIA, Ex-Military Intelligence Financial firms are particularly eager to recruit former Afghan and Iraq war vets with intelligence operations experience since they can bring new technology and techniques to research and analysis. Steve Ballmer: Microsoft Is "Betting Our Company" On The Cloud Speaking to a gathering of hundreds of students at the University of Washington, Ballmer said: "I'll know we've succeeded with this aspect of the cloud the day we all agree that the virtual interaction through the cloud is as good as being here." Buy-Side And Sell-Side Firms Focus On Data Quality And Consistency A Thomson Reuters and Lepus survey of 100 buy- and sell-side firms revealed that more than three quarters of participants (77%) intend to increase spending on projects that address data quality and consistency issues. Introducing Broker-Dealers Compete With Big Boys Introducing brokers' technology budgets are small, but many of these firms can, and do, compete with the largest firms' platforms simply by being smart shoppers, says a new Aite Group report. PERSPECTIVES In Praise of Shorts and Financial Speculation While the stocks of many investment banks tanked and a number failed, it wasn't the short sellers that created the problems, writes WS&T special contributing editor Larry Tabb. |
