Certain mandate restrictions can hugely increase frictional costs for asset managers. A classic example is where US managers can only hold ADRs as opposed to directly holding foreign stocks, and have historically been hit hard by instrument conversion costs and FX dealing spreads. Joseph Wald, Managing Director at Knight Capital Group, shows how multi asset algorithmic execution can massively reduce these costs.

Immense market data volumes and a relentless latency race to zero has created plenty of challenges for high (and low) frequency trading firms as they attempt to trade modern markets. Not least of which being the need to be able to spot faults at trading speed. Bob Giffords talks to experts from leading buy- and sell-side firms to explore the world of FPGAs, microsecond timestampting, clustered trading engines and more...

…and consolidate the compatible. Do we need a consolidated tape? Or would it be enough just to have markets in which a consolidated tape was possible? Bob Giffords draws out the intractable questions.

It 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.

Knight Capital's Kee-Meng Tan draws on his experience from the US and predicts that it's only a matter of time before traders are completely comfortable using alternative venues when the LSE is down.

Mar 21st, 2013 - AT summit dates announced, O'Malia on swap data collection & cross border regulation, IOSCO called to take lead, COBA project disbands, NYSE announces mini-options, SGX & PDS sign MOU, CME clearing approved, Janney selects INDATA iPM Cloud, BATS in US disaster recovery test, Anova bridges DC news & NASDAQ markets, FXone certified for Knight Hotspot FX, FFastfill connects to HKMEx, Redline's InRush 3 certified for Thomas Reuters FX platform, new ITG POSIT Alert launched, Options enhances Metro

Mar 12th, 2013 - Options continues expansion with new FX trading destinations, faster route to Chicago

Feb 27th, 2013 - Would an order-to-trade ratio be more appropriately called an ordeal-to-trade ratio? The European Commission does not appear to think so, but many in the market do.

Feb 25th, 2013 - Knight will sell a unit that includes investment grade, high yield and asset-backed brokers in the US and Europe, Bloomberg said.

Feb 21st, 2013 - The new management team includes a banker whose departure from UBS made headlines and an interim appointment that led to speculation about the future of Hotspot.