Category: Trading Technology

Tilting at Giants

Tilting at Giants

In Miguel de Cervantes’ seminal 17th Century novel, a delusional middle-aged man named Alonso Quixano becomes obsessed with chivalry and believes he is a knight named Don Quixote. Accompanied by his loyal sidekick, Sancho Panza, Don Quixote sets out on a series of misadventures, perhaps the best known of which is tilting at windmills in […]

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Platform for Growth – an Emerging Approach to Making Better Trading Technology Decisions

Platform for Growth – an Emerging Approach to Making Better Trading Technology Decisions

In this article, orginally published in Best Execution, our CEO, Mike Powell, looks at an emerging approach to making better trading technology decisions. Capital markets institutions face a heady mix of geopolitical, economic, and structural challenges as they consider their strategic growth plans. With Europe slipping into recession, the Ukraine conflict driving up energy prices, […]

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trading platform monitoring

Trading Platform Oversight & Choosing the Right Monitoring Solution

Running a sell-side trading desk is a challenging business. Activity is highly regulated, customers are demanding, and competitors more than happy to take your place. Sales traders and execution teams are under intense pressure to update clients on the status of large open orders, explain why a trade may have been rejected or remains unexecuted, […]

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Beyond Crypto – realising the potential for digital assets with institutional investors

Beyond Crypto – realising the potential for digital assets with institutional investors

Crypto currencies have been making headlines again over the last couple of weeks thanks to Chinese regulators banning financial institutions and payment companies from providing cryptocurrency transaction services, while also warning investors against speculative crypto trading. Sentiment was further undermined by Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, reversing a previous decision that his company would accept Bitcoin […]

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Venue Solutions

Post-Pandemic Optimism – a new era of technology enabled innovation for capital markets

I was lucky enough to join Nomura’s Japanese equity desk in London as my first job out of university. It was the late 80s, the Nikkei 225 was soon to hit an all-time high of nearly 39,000, and the big 4 Japanese brokerages of Nomura, Yamaichi, Daiwa and Nikko had become international financial powerhouses. However, […]

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Confidence to Move Faster - Control and Manage Complex Trading Infrastructure

Confidence to Move Faster – Control and Manage Complex Trading Infrastructure

Running trading infrastructure in large sell-side firms is a tough gig. Not only are you responsible for perhaps the most business-critical part of your organisation, but even the smallest outage or change management error is highly visible to your clients.   Dropping the ball can have significant economic consequences, not least thanks to an increasingly […]

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Competing for Order Flow - The Differentiation Dilemma

Competing for Order Flow – The Differentiation Dilemma

What does competing order flow mean to you? The economics of providing sell-side execution services have become increasingly challenging since the financial crisis of 2008. High costs and commission compression are driving an unhealthy level of industry consolidation. And while the increasing prevalence of white label business models and improved off-the-shelf technology have helped address […]

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