Bank of America Merrill Lynch is seeking to attract long-term investors who have become disillusioned with equity markets. Its new trading system, Instinct Natural, is a crossing network that is clearly geared towards customers that want to trade in blocks. But market participants have expressed concerns about its potential to meet the needs of long-term investors.
Hats off to Rising Sum, which has built a platform that identifies investment opportunities “using the acquisition criteria favoured by Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s highly successful investment vehicle”.
Technical problems at Nasdaq and BATS have reinforced the impression among many market observers that there may be something seriously wrong with equity market structure. Recent history reads like a catalogue of disaster for many of the world’s most prominent trading venues.
A study shows that 62% of City traders “admit to missing key investment or sell opportunities because they didn’t keep track of time zone differences”.
Peter Reitz, managing director of Eurex Repo and Eurex Bonds since 2006, has stepped down from the posts. He will continue to bear overall responsibility for the two subsidiaries on the Eurex Executive Board.
Chilean broker Banchile, part of Santiago- based Banco de Chile, has deployed a brokerage platform from UK systems supplier Fidessa that will link it to international trading venues.
Squawker, the start-up block trading venue headed by Christopher Gregory, has moved one step closer to its goal of providing a pan-European mid-point matching service for banks and brokers, following a deal between it and Switzerland’s SIX Financial Information this week.
Nasdaq OMX is to combine its market technology and corporate solutions businesses, in a move that it says will help the firm provide more transparency to customers and a stronger business proposition.
Online trading service DCM Capital has released a trading platform with a social media sentiment feed, allowing traders to incorporate information from channels such as twitter and Facebook into their trading decisions.
Data users wanting to use Reuters Instrument Codes to access data carried on consolidated data feeds from other information providers will be able to do so following the resolution of a European Commission investigation into whether Thomson Reuters was abusing its monopoly position.
Brokers are being forced to consider novel approaches to doing business – including outsourcing of areas that have been previously seen as core – as they struggle to work out viable economic models for their products and services.
Like Apple under Steve Jobs, Bloomberg has a long-held reputation for being a ‘closed’ sort of company, reluctant to compromise its products or its ways of working.
Capital markets participants are increasingly turning to combined execution and order management systems that include tools for algorithmic and basket trading strategies in multiple asset classes, according to a new report by consultancy GreySpark Partners.
BNP Paribas Securities Services is planning to offer a post-trade service for banks and brokers that want to take advantage of the new cross-trade deal between the London Stock Exchange and the Singapore Exchange.
