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‘Wild West’ crypto-assets should be regulated according to the UK Treasury Committee which has published a unanimously-agreed report on crypto-assets for its Digital Currencies inquiry.
The report finds that problems include volatile prices, hacking vulnerabilities, minimal consumer protection, and anonymity aiding money laundering. At a minimum, regulation should address consumer protection and Anti-Money Laundering (AML), the committee says.
Blockchain is deemed currently slow, costly and energy-intensive, but there is potential for data storage uses.
The report says: “There are a number of examples of blockchain being deployed in the financial services industry and supply chain management. The Committee is supportive
Vela, an independent provider of trading and market access technology for global multi-asset electronic trading, has added key Asia Pacific (APAC) exchanges to SuperFeed, its normalised Market Data Feed.
The initial implementation will deliver APAC exchange data to existing locations in Europe and North America. The exchanges being added to Vela’s SuperFeed include major futures and options markets within the region, specifically ASX24, Hong Kong Exchange, National Stock Exchange of India, Osaka Stock Exchange, and Singapore Stock Exchange, with further markets due to be added in 2019 as well as access points within the region.
Vela’s SuperFeed provides low-latency, normalised
QuantHouse, an independent global provider of end-to-end systematic trading solutions including market data services, an algo trading platform and infrastructure solutions, has added Enyx to the qh API ecosystem.
The addition of Enyx, a provider of low-latency, FPGA-based market data and order execution systems, provides trading firms with immediate access to a high performance, FPGA accelerated end-to-end market data service.
FPGA solutions have been predominantly leveraged by an elite few given the associated barriers to entry for dedicated platforms. To help reduce cost and time to market, Enyx and QuantHouse delivered, as a service, an FPGA accelerated hardware solution
The Derivatives Service Bureau, founded by the Association of Numbering Agencies (ANNA) to facilitate the allocation and maintenance of International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs) for OTC Derivatives, is looking for broader industry representation within the DSB’s Product Committee, and is now inviting applications to participate.
From 8 January 2019, representation will include two new categories, custodians and data vendors, to expand on the existing buy-side, sell-side and trading venues, thereby increasing voting members from nine to 15. Participation is also open to trade associations as non-voting members, as well as ensuring a balanced representation of asset class knowledge and geographical
ICAP Capital Markets, now known as Intercapital Capital Markets, is to pay a USD50 million penalty to settle US CFTC charges that, through certain of its brokers, it aided and abetted numerous attempts by several of its bank clients to manipulate the ISDAFIX benchmark, a leading global benchmark referenced in a range of interest rate products.
A CFTC Order finds that over more than five years, beginning in at least January 2007 and continuing through December 2012 (the Relevant Period), ICAP’s swaps brokers were regularly enlisted by traders at bank clients to assist in attempting to manipulate the US Dollar
Outflows from the hedge fund industry slowed substantially in July amid mixed signals on trade and the global economy, according to the Barclay Fund Flow Indicator. Hedge fund industry assets rose to an all-time high of USD3.1 trillion in July.
Data drawn from more than 5,000 hedge funds in the BarclayHedge database estimated that the hedge fund industry (excluding CTAs) gave up USD1.0 billion (-0.03 per cent of assets) in July, slowing nearly nine-fold from redemptions of USD8.9 billion (-0.3 per cent of assets) the month before. The back-to-back outflows underscore uncertainties about trade, corporate earnings and global commodities prices,
Outsourced trading solutions firm Tourmaline Partners has added an “execution dashboard” to its client website to provide its buy-side clients with greater transparency into their total broker research spend.
Now, in addition to providing comprehensive trade detail and aggregated CSA (commission sharing arrangement) administration, Tourmaline tracks and reports each client’s total broker spend, combining all broker CSA payments and attributed trading. (‘Attributed trading’, or ‘attribution’, arises when clients ask Tourmaline to trade with specific brokers as payment for research services. This is most common with clients outside the MiFID II regime.)
“Investment Managers continue to reduce broker lists
TORA, a provider of a cloud-based order and execution management system (OEMS), has expanded its support for MiFID II transaction and trade reporting by integrating its trading system with NEX Regulatory Reporting.
In a bid to improve transparency, MiFID II requires asset managers to submit transaction reports, including order size, timestamps, asset type and venue to an Approved Reporting Mechanism (ARM) on T+1 for onward reporting to local regulators. MIFID II firms are also required to send trade reports including prices, volumes and instrument identifies to an Approved Publication Arrangement (APA).
By integrating the TORA OEMS with NEX Regulatory
Close to 60 per cent of Alternative UCITS funds posted losses in August, pushing broad-based indices lower. The LuxHedge Global Alternative UCITS Index lost -0.41 per cent, bringing 2018 YTD to -1.43 per cent.
Only one quarter of all funds are currently able to post year-to-date positive figures.
Equity Hedge strategies focussing on the US stock market are a notable exception with the LuxHedge Equity Long/Short US Index advancing 1.13 per cent in August (+2.44 per cent YTD). This is not only due to a long market bias, but also Equity Market Neutral US funds are able to create
Hedge funds are up 0.45 per cent for the year, their weakest performance on record since 2011 when they declined 0.40 per cent in the eight months through to August, according to the September 2018 Eurekahedge Report.
Almost 46 per cent of the managers are in the green for the year with roughly 12 per cent of these managers posting double digit gains as tracked in the Eurekahedge Global Hedge Funds Database.
Total assets under management have increased by USD7.4 billion as of August 2018 year-to-date, down from USD147.4 billion over the same period last year as performance driven
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