Cover story Articles from Automated Trader
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There goes the neighbourhood
SUBSCRIBERS ONLYIt’s open season on hedge-fund managers and high-frequency traders in Europe and the USA. Legislators on both sides of the pond are voting on new rules to redefine the traditional relationship between risk and reward – expect a legalese version of: don’t take the risks because we’re going to deny you the rewards. Much of this is necessary work – after all, we don’t want those naughty defaulting mid-western mortgage holders bringing down the financial system again, do we? But some of it looks more like political grandstanding than enlightened policy-making, and some of it seems downright unhelpful. Automated Trader’s Editor, William Essex, considers the possible unintended consequences of the current transatlantic regulation-fest, and wonders whether we might all be better turning up for work – somewhere else.full story
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The show must go on!
SUBSCRIBERS ONLYIt was fun, actually, Trade Tech this year. More volcanic eruptions than usual, and perhaps fewer people than Paris 2009 – although the official count made it “the largest gathering of equities professionals in the ten-year history of TradeTech”. But a lot of connections were made, follow-up meetings arranged, and key issues addressed, both in the formal sessions and on the exhibition floor. Latency was the biggest issue discussed but not the only one: when we weren’t talking about those last few micro-seconds, we were discussing: effective data delivery and usage; smart- and smarter-order routing; best execution; market surveillance; post-trade economics; clearing – and whether we had enough room in the magazine for all those launches. Automated Trader’s Editor, William Essex, reviews the show that so nearly didn’t happen.full story
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You want alpha with that?
SUBSCRIBERS ONLYAnd do you want your order well done, or scrambled? Helen Sanders serves up the latest in adaptive routing technology.full story
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Give us an A!
SUBSCRIBERS ONLYScribes and soothsayers have been analysing trades since the first cargo of spices was unloaded from the first camel train. But would their work have been any easier if they’d had laptops? William Essex looks for simplicity in the evolving complexity of pre-, post-, and above all during-trade analysis.full story
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Perfect Partners?
SUBSCRIBERS ONLYDo partnerships add value? Really? Are you sure? How much value? As the Automated Trader editorial inboxes clog up with more and more news releases about exciting new partnerships, William Essex wonders, is this really the most effective use of time and resources?full story
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The Shock of the News
SUBSCRIBERS ONLYMachines can read the news now, but can they be trusted to act on it? There’s been a lot of talk about machine-readable news since our Q1 2008 feature*, but does that go any further than adding bells, whistles and meta-tags to the text streaming across the bottom of the screen? Spurred on by recent events, William Essex has returned to the search for a genuinely machine-usable news solution.full story
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Machine versus Man versus Machine?
SUBSCRIBERS ONLYWhat’s the sense in trading the traders? William Essex closes our discussion of commodities with a look at the changing behaviour of the markets themselves. Might the “electronic effect”, and within that a distinct “algo effect”, itself become a factor in a commodity-trading strategy? full story
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Volatile but fundamentally floored?
SUBSCRIBERS ONLYWe continue our coverage of commodities with one man’s analysis of the long-term case for investment. David Nahmanovici delivered his analysis at IDX in London, back in June. We were in the audience. full story
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Commodities on the menu
SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Hard and soft, edible and not-so-edible commodities have been a hot topic recently. But what substance is there behind the sizzle? Automated Trader has been looking into the current commodity boom, and asking, are these markets ripe for automation, and if so, what are their trading characteristics and their long-term potential for automated alpha generation? In the first of our series of linked articles on this theme, Dr. Robert Brady, CTO of Brady PLC analyses the current use and likely future evolution of automated trading in commodities markets. This is, as Dr. Brady observes, a whole asset class in transition. Some of its trading practices are arcane, but some put it right up on the screen alongside already heavily auto-traded markets such as FX and stock indices. Shouldn’t you be getting a feed on commodities? full story
