Solutions
Much is written about the operational challenges that hedge fund managers face today but when it comes to data collection – ie reference data, pricing, portfolio valuations – and trade execution or standardised reporting, service providers and investors have to contend with plenty of pain points.
Of course, managers must stay on top of operations in the current regulatory and compliance environment, leading to focus more on the front-office. However, for investors, fund administrators and custodians, they are crying out for an industry-standard electronic data exchange for middle- and back-office tasks; one that delivers an automated efficient flow of fund data that
While hedge funds struggled in Q4, so did passive investments. Could higher volatility in 2019 help active stock pickers shine?
The fourth quarter of 2018 culminated in a substantial market correction. Everywhere one looked, it was a sea of red. Far from bringing festive cheer, on Christmas Eve both the Dow Jones and S&P 500 fell 2.5 per cent before a rapid rebound a couple of days later.
At one point the Dow was down 18.8 per cent from its October high, while the S&P had fallen 19.8 per cent.
Volatility is often the friend to hedge funds, historically, as
Integral, a foreign exchange markets technology specialist for banks, brokers, and asset managers, has reported average daily volumes (ADV) across Integral platforms of USD34.7 billion in January 2019.
Though down slightly compared to the previous month, this represents an increase of 1 per cent relative to the same period in 2018.
“We’re committed to supporting our customers as they continue to capture share in their very competitive markets,” says Harpal Sandhu, CEO of Integral. “Integral’s leading-edge technology gives our customers an advantage that they are successfully leveraging.”
No other platform reaches as many, as varied, and as comprehensive a set of
Equitivo, a full-service fintech consultancy, has launched in London and Manchester, providing a range of services dedicated to assisting new and growing fintech organisations in the UK and Europe.
Founded by Andrew Holgate, the co-founder of one of Europe’s largest peer-to-peer lenders, Equitivo’s range of services has been developed to help ambitious fintech businesses navigate the challenges of the rapidly changing market landscape.
Equitivo will make use of Holgate’s 20 plus years of experience in banking and accountancy as well as establishing and growing fintech enterprises. He has also assembled a team of experts to provide a full advisory service
Market data solutions provider MDX Technology (MDXT) has become the first provider of connectivity to real-time market data to integrate with OpenFin, enabling financial institutions and FinTech firms to consume multi-vendor market data feeds.
With an extensive library of market data interfaces, MDXT enables OpenFin clients to connect their desktop applications to a broad range of real-time market data feeds via a single API, providing uniform access to a variety of providers, so data can be consumed by desktop and web applications, as well as excel spreadsheets. This allows users to select the best-of-breed market data provider that best fits
Quant Insight, a London-based firm specialising in machine learning-driven macro analytics, in partnership with Euronext, has developed a new alternative data service, Macro Risk Insight, to provide asset managers with insight into the risk exposure of their investments to global macro factors.
Macro Risk Insight uses innovative quantitative techniques to help clients identify and quantify the key macro drivers, such as real rates, exchange rates, inflation and commodity prices, that drive the pricing of their assets and portfolios. The service, which covers pan-European blue-chip equities, uses Quant Insight’s proprietary adaptive models to calculate each stock’s exposure to macro factors. Additionally, it calculates the sensitivity of each stock for more
MIAX Options is scheduled to launch volatility trading on the SPIKES Index (SPIKE) on 19 February. MIAX Options will list and trade cash-settled options on SPIKES, a measure of the expected 30-day volatility in the SPDR® S&P 500 ETF (SPY), the most actively-traded exchange traded fund in the world.
“For the first time in its history, the volatility trading market will be open to the full supply and demand pressures of the entire US market,” says Thomas P Gallagher (pictured), Chairman and CEO of MIAX Options. “But reaching this milestone is just the beginning of a long line of advancements we have planned for SPIKES and MIAX Options. We are excited to see this process unfold
Investment firms – hedge funds, sell-side research groups, traders, and asset managers generally – are increasingly relying on the web (via the process of web scraping) as a source of investment data, a trend that is set to increase rapidly in coming years, according to a new report from Opimas.
‘Web Scraping for Investments – Asset Managers’ Bid to Generate Alpha Using the Ultimate Dataset’, authored by Opimas founder and CEO Octavio Marenzi (pictured), estimates that, with 206 billion page views per day in 2018, web scraping for investments already accounts for 5 per cent of all web traffic.
By 2020, Opimas expects that
The Standards Board for Alternative Investments (SBAI) has published the Standardised Trial Data License Agreement, which addresses issues investment managers face when trialling new data sources, especially ‘alternative data’ and ‘big data’.
The SBAI is a global standard-setting body for the alternative investment industry supported by approximately 200 alternative investment managers and institutional investors who collectively manage USD3.5 trillion.
Currently, trialling new data is significantly slowed due to the negotiating process of a trial data license agreement, as there is no generally accepted agreement available in the industry. Some data vendors offer trial data license agreements, but they lack
Financial markets participants can now increase the security of their cloud infrastructure with the addition of Microsoft Azure connectivity to Transaction Network Services’ (TNS) Secure Cloud Connect solution.
Launched just over a year ago, TNS Secure Cloud Connect provides secure, resilient and easy access to a range of cloud services. It facilitates connectivity to the cloud as well as from the cloud to TNS’ vast global financial community. Where cloud providers use a regional set up, such as with Azure, TNS Secure Cloud Connect enables cross-region connectivity to help make the infrastructure more efficient and redundant.
Microsoft Azure is
