Automated Trader Magazine Articles & Insight

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Issue 25 Q2 2012 - Chaos theory dictates that when a butterfly flaps its wings in China, a volcano erupts in Iceland. Or something like that. Luckily, we have the technology to handle chaos. As every school-age maths prodigy knows, Complex Event Processing (CEP) technology has been evolving in recent years, just in time to handle today's alpha-rich array of post-crash complexities. It's that simple... or is it? Anita Hawser investigates.

FREE ARTICLE - Issue 25 Q2 2012 - While the demand for non-displayed liquidity in Europe remains strong and the growth of European dark pools continues, there are pools and then there are pools. The quality of liquidity in a dark pool depends not only on the participants, but also on the quality control the dark pool operator is able to exert. Moreover, as Christian Hesse, Senior Quantitative Strategist for Autobahn Equity Algorithmic Trading at Deutsche Bank explains, there is the issue of pending regulatory change to consider.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Issue 25 Q2 2012 - Shawn Edwards is Chief Technology Officer at Bloomberg. The job involves overseeing the development and implementation of Bloomberg’s global technology strategy, working with customers on their technology strategies, recruiting and getting the best out of Bloomberg’s development teams, finding the value in IT trends, sourcing and developing ideas – and for a couple of hours a week or two back, talking to Andy Webb about the thinking underlying Bloomberg’s attitude towards technology development.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Issue 25 Q2 2012 - What do you do if you’re an OTC trader and you hear that your market will have to move to centralised clearing? Moan? Bury your head in the sand? Not if you’re Christian Martin – instead you immediately set about founding a marketplace for OTC products with links to multiple CCPs. Andy Webb talks to the CEO of TeraExchange just a few days before its ‘go live’ date about the democratisation of the OTC world.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Issue 25 Q2 2012 - In our last issue, the Wrecking Crew tried to make life complicated by plugging various separate applications together to create a model development and trading environment. In this issue, they make a complete U-turn by taking a look at RTS’s RTD Tango QUANT application, which delivers that same environment in a single application.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Issue 24 Q1 2012 - With his first Summer-job paycheck, Russell Newton bought an Acorn Atom and tried to model equities. Now, thirty-two years later, he's running Global Advisors in Jersey, the equities have given way to commodities, and - actually, the job may have got bigger, but perhaps it hasn't changed all that much. Andy Webb spoke to Russell Newton about discretion, model development and commodity strategies.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Issue 24 Q1 2012 - There are beginners in this business... and there are beginners. GHF Group is the second kind. Big and global, GHF Group is an established financial services holding company that includes diverse, independent businesses: global clearing, investments, and trading. The trading business includes experienced traders and other market professionals, and has recently started a move into "the business of algorithms" that so far, has looked less like a learning experience for the Group, and more like a potentially big opportunity for the rest of us - for quants, model-builders and just about anybody else with an idea worth automating. Andy Webb went to meet Ron Hertshten, a managing director in GHF Group who is responsible for algo trading, to discuss.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Issue 24 Q1 2012 - If you were to list the key attributes of a 'future-proofed' enterprise, of whatever size, you would probably put sound trade ideas and effectively deployed technology somewhere towards the top. We certainly would. So, for the third of our series of conversations with key industry figures about ensuring the long-term survival of the enterprise, we spoke to Colin Berthoud and then Jason Larsen of TIM Group about - you guessed it - running a business focused on developing sound trade ideas and dependent on effectively deployed technology. The two interviews were conducted on consecutive days by our founder and all-round techno-guru, Andy Webb, and, despite some degree of overlap, we have resisted the temptation to edit them into one continuous conversation. There are important issues being discussed here, and we were struck by the 'added value' of hearing two distinct perspectives. Andy began by inviting Colin Berthoud to set the scene...

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Issue 24 Q1 2012 - Well yes OK, we know we're rather stretching the definition of "mashup" here, but it has rather more punch as a title than "we attempt to cobble together some random bits of software into a trading application/model doing a spot of (re)reviewing along the way". Though that's probably a more accurate description of what the Wrecking Crew and Automated Trader's Founder, Andy Webb, have actually been up to for the last month or two.

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Issue 24 Q1 2012 - ...and humans with an algo touch. Andy Webb spoke to Evan Hochstein, CIO, GHF Group, about the technology needed to give a human trader an algo-edge, and vice-versa.