Solutions
‘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
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
The Exchange Council of the European Energy Exchange (EEX) says it is particularly encouraged by the continuous trend of hedging long-term positions such as PPAs via EEX and its clearing house ECC.
EEX’s concept of long-term hedging with standard futures products has been well received by the market, resulting in additional trading volumes and open interest. Long-term hedges are used to mitigate price and counterparty risks arising from PPAs or other long-term power positions. In the period May to September 2018, strips of yearly futures contracts up to calendar year 2024 have been registered in Spain and Germany, achieving a
CMC Markets Institutional – a provider of liquidity and white label trading solutions – has launched a new Prime Derivatives trading platform providing professional individual and institutional clients with access to trade global single stock CFDs.
Accessing Prime Brokerage services across all asset classes has become harder in recent years as changes to regulation and approaches to risk management have evolved. Many counterparties including smaller brokers, asset managers and hedge funds have therefore found it increasingly difficult to obtain efficient routes to market access, and this now serves as a catalyst for innovation across the industry.
CMC Markets Prime
The last thing any hedge fund manager wants is to be off-boarded by a Prime Broker. It can be a destabilising and unsettling experience, potentially leading to a loss of confidence among investors. It is vital, therefore, to find the right Prime Broker that can partner with a manager based on a clear understanding of business wants and needs.
This is especially true in today’s regulatory environment where Basel III has caused banks to carefully consider their short-term and long-term liquidity positions and transform their businesses. In many ways, this has reshaped the Prime Brokerage relationship, making efficiencies and returns more
Regulation continues to bite and influence the way investment banks structure their business activities. Most notably for the hedge fund industry, the banks are being forced to reassess their activities pertaining to prime brokerage. Five years ago, banks remained in denial about the impact regulatory reforms would have. But then a black swan event occurred.
On 15 January 2015, the Swiss National Bank decided to de-peg the Swiss franc from the euro, sending the markets into turmoil and leaving a trail of casualties. Within a twenty-minute period, between 9.30am and 9.50am UK time, the CHF went into hyper drive, appreciating almost
