Latest News
By James Williams – “Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.” Thomas A Edison. On 1 March 2013, Swiss fund managers awoke to a new dawn. Overnight, they had gone from operating in a market free of the shackles of regulation to one where the Swiss government gave its imprimatur to the revised CISA (Collective Investment Schemes Act). This, along with the Collective Investment Schemes Ordinance (CISO), means that all Swiss-based asset managers overseeing fund investments now fall under the watchful gaze of FINMA, the Swiss regulator.
“Where we are in Ticino (southern-most canton), I
Eight of Newedge’s 11 hedge fund indices showed positive performance during March.
The Newedge Trend Index increased 1.89 per cent in March, followed by the Newedge CTA Index, which gained 1.29 per cent. The Newedge Trend Index and Newedge CTA Index have risen 3.68 per cent and 2.87 per cent, respectively, for the year.
The Newedge Short-Term Trading Index was up 0.80 per cent in March and 3.51 per cent for 2013.
The Newedge Volatility Trading Index had the worst performance during the month and was down 0.81 per cent.
The Newedge Trend Index, which is
The US Patent and Trademark office has issued Patent Number 8,352,353 for Eze Software Group’s execution management system, the RealTick EMS.
The patent covers the proprietary technology and methodology for the staging of electronic orders into a neutral (aggregation) account for execution, providing ultimate flexibility and workflow efficiency to traders while maintaining their anonymity.
"We are excited to have been issued this patent," says Daniel Rooney, president of Eze Software Group’s RealTick EMS division. "RealTick has always been a leader in providing multi-broker functionality and this patent recognises that strength. Since its release, a majority of our customers
S&P Capital IQ’s Real Time Solutions has released its automated trading platform, QuantFACTORY 5.3.2, which includes a number of new features designed to help strengthen its overall capabilities and performance.
Quant traders, researchers and developers at banks, hedge funds and prop desks will benefit from the firm’s QuantDEVELOPER, QuantDATACENTER and QuantFRAMEWORK offerings. These will enable them to build and deploy alpha models more rapidly, thus allowing them to further focus on business development.
QuantFACTORY offers a complete set of tools for the development and automation of quantitative trading strategies. Based on a .NET framework clients can rationalise their
Last year one of the biggest themes was that Europe didn’t get fixed, yet it was provided with so much liquidity that it was inflated out of its existing stress levels,” says Fraser Lundie (pictured), who runs the credit desk at Hermes Fund Managers alongside Mitch Reznick. “The reason that was such a big trade, in particular for high yield, was because it was in no way consensus. At the start of 2012 there wasn’t a single person on the street who had European high yield returning no more than a few per cent at best.
“Because everyone was caught
Graham Stock (pictured), chief strategist at Insparo Asset Management comments on China-Africa relations ahead of the China-Africa Business Summit…
“China is a source of valuable inward investment for Africa and will remain a long-term source of demand for African exports. The focus to date has been on oil and base and precious metals, with Chinese diplomatic and commercial activity particularly evident in Angola, Sudan, Nigeria, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zimbabwe. We expect to see increased interest in the agricultural sector too, through demand for grain exports from southern Africa, long-term leases of undeveloped arable land across the
BCS Prime Brokerage, an independent financial institution, has appointed John Barker and Edward Golosov to its board.
Barker (pictured) and Golosov join existing executive directors Rizwan Kayani and Vitaliy Shelikhovskiy.
Barker joins as a non-executive director bringing more than 20 years of management experience in financial markets, including regulated brokers, banks and electronic trading platforms to the firm.
Prior to this role, Barker was the chief executive and managing director of Liquidnet Europe. He was also head of international with responsibility for driving revenue across Asia, Canada and the move into Latin America. Barker was intrinsic
Hedge funds gained 1.12 per cent in March, according to the Barclay Hedge Fund Index compiled by BarclayHedge.
The index is up 3.96 per cent year to date, and has enjoyed ten straight months of gains.
“The mid-month announcement of a flawed Cyprus bailout plan unsettled global markets and sentiment shifted back to risk-off,” says Sol Waksman, founder and president of BarclayHedge. “Interest rates moved lower and equity markets were muted with the notable exceptions of the US and Japan. The Nikkei Index gained 7.25 per cent as the BOJ aggressively moved to reflate Japan’s economy and stressed
The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) has published a consultation paper on Principles for Financial Benchmarks, which seeks public comments on a set of high-level principles for benchmarks used in global financial markets.
Because of the wide diversity of benchmarks, IOSCO is also asking for public comment on a subset of more detailed principles for benchmarks having specific risks arising from their reliance on submissions and/or their ownership structure.
The principles form part of IOSCO ́s efforts to enhance the integrity, the reliability and the oversight of benchmarks by establishing guidelines for benchmark administrators and other relevant
Appleby, a provider of offshore legal, fiduciary and administration services, has made two senior additions to its funds and investment services team in Guernsey.
Appleby’s global head of funds, Ian Gobin (pictured), will transfer from the Cayman office to lead the global funds practice for a period of time from Guernsey. He will be joined by Deborah Poole who will be returning to Appleby in May as a partner in the same team.
Gobin joined Appleby last November having spent 11 years with another offshore firm. An expert in the funds and finance arena, with extensive knowledge of both the
