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The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Changing landscapes: Electronic trading picks up the pace in commodity markets
While electronic trading, technology and related infrastructures are now a well-established, if not essential, part of highly-liquid markets such as equities or spot FX, the rate of adoption has been markedly slower in the commodities space. But the past year in particular has seen a notable upturn in demand for electronic trading, from both newer entrants as well as more established venues. Nicola Tavendale and Mike O’Hara of The Realization Group talk to Ollie Cadman of Vela, Jamie Turner of the London Metal Exchange, Andrew Polydor and David Perkins of TP ICAP, Fraser Bell of BSO and...
24 days ago,(2018/05/31)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled HPC strategies for financial services: The playing field widens
Produced by The Realization Group in association with Verne Global
Introduction
The financial marketplace today is dominated by growing regulatory requirements, constantly changing liquidity conditions and increasingly complex asset-class strategies by firms across the spectrum. In such an environment, it’s no longer only top-tier banks that need vast amounts of high performance computing (HPC) capabilities to handle the huge number of calculations needed for risk management, trade idea generation, compliance or a host of other functions that sell-side and buy-side organisations carry...
26 days ago,(2018/05/29)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Bridging the Gap: New Approaches to Creating a Culture of Innovation
In the last four years, investment banks have been significantly underspending on innovation. According to data compiled by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG)1, change-the-bank (CTB) spend is almost flat at a rate of around one percent and only a small proportion of that spend is on true innovation, with as much as 80% focused on legacy system upgrades.
At the same time, demand for cutting-edge technologies and agile systems has never been greater, with financial organisations increasingly recognising the need for innovation to become an ingrained part of their...
31 days ago,(2018/05/24)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Systematic Internalisers – Data holds key to challenges and opportunities in MiFID II era
MiFID II broadens the scope of the systematic internaliser (SI) regime, not only to cover more asset classes, but also to apply more stringent rules, with the aim of improving pre-trade transparency and improving price efficiency and client executions. To examine the far-reaching consequences and practical implications for liquidity seekers and providers, against a backdrop of tougher Best Execution requirements, Chris Hall and Mike O’Hara of The Realization Group talk to Ollie Cadman of Vela, Citi’s James Baugh, Sun Trading’s Jamal Tarazi (Sun...
51 days ago,(2018/05/04)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Taking the Leap into Asia and Cryptocurrencies: The Future for FX Trading?
As the world’s largest financial market, the ability to swiftly identify and capitalize on key trends in foreign exchange is crucial – which is why the BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey of global FX trading is one of the most significant datasets currently produced for the capital markets. The latest report, published in September 2016, underscored a particularly noteworthy shift for many participants in this space, namely the increase in market share for Asia’s three key FX trading hubs – Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore – from 15% to...
76 days ago,(2018/04/09)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Alpha profiling, strategy toolkits, broker scorecards: The keys to best execution?
Various tools are emerging to help buy-side firms optimise their broker selection for best execution. Examples include algo wheels, broker scorecards and bracketing frameworks that allow for effective monitoring of broker performance on an ongoing basis. Joel Clark and Mike O’Hara of The Realization Group discuss the most effective use cases for alpha profiling and the challenges that may be associated with such an approach. They talk to Dan Royal of Janus Henderson Investors, Allan Goldstein of Trade Informatics, Michael Broadbent from the Ergo...
111 days ago,(2018/03/05)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Q&A with Allan Goldstein, Trade Informatics
Harrington Starr announced Definitive List of the 100 Most Influential FinTech Companies 2018 at the FinTech Influencers event in London.
Allan Goldstein, CFO, COO and CCO at Trade Informatics explains why
Why was the company set up? How did you select the vertical and decide to be a part of the global FinTech community?
We set up Trade Informatics in 2009, prior to the global FinTech surge, to extend on our experiences in institutional equity trading. At this time the industry was largely high-touch plus a nascent low-touch with basic benchmarking algorithms. The major sell-side...
141 days ago,(2018/02/02)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Beating repetitive strain: Value-added services in post-trade
New technologies and new business models, as well as regulatory drivers such as MiFID II and Dodd-Frank, are contributing to a transformation in the post-trade landscape. From a regulatory standpoint, the push towards central clearing of OTC and bilaterally traded instruments presents firms with a number of challenges but also new opportunities, as clearing firms and technology vendors innovate to overcome some of the obstacles associated with these changes.
In this Financial Markets Insights report, Dan Barnes & Mike O’Hara of The Realization Group hear from Julie Carruthers of...
143 days ago,(2018/02/01)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled AI and Deep Learning in Risk and Investment Management
Deep learning, or the ability of machines to learn using artificial neural networks, has been around since the mid-1960s. In recent years, however, advances in computation performance and storage technologies are enabling the large quantities of data required for effective neural networks to be rapidly processed. As a result, the use of deep learning is increasingly being explored across multiple industries and geographies. In this article, Mike O’Hara and Joel Clark of The Realization Group discuss the possible use cases for deep learning within financial services, particularly in risk...
201 days ago,(2017/12/05)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Making the market: Building prices in fixed income
The fixed income markets are going through a period of significant transition. While capital constraints and a long period of low volatility have led to challenges in how firms source liquidity, recent increases in bond volatility have led to renewed profitability - and investment - in the markets. And with regulatory reforms forcing more and more trading into the electronic domain, new liquidity venues are beginning to proliferate. Firms across the buy side and the sell side are now having to assess what this all means from a technology perspective. In this Financial Markets Insights report,...
223 days ago,(2017/11/13)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Roundtable Report - Embracing the sharing economy: Why outsourcing financial infrastructure is taking off
During October 2017, The Realization Group, together with McKay Brothers, Interxion and Options Technology, hosted a round table to discuss a trend whereby increasing numbers of financial firms are now outsourcing vital parts of their trading infrastructure.
Driven partly by regulatory requirements as well as cost considerations, many companies are discovering that outsourcing makes for a compelling business case. For many years, the objection, particularly at large banks, was that it was not safe to hand over mission-critical parts of an operation to external companies. That concern has...
249 days ago,(2017/10/18)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Do Good to Do Better: How a focus on ESG can improve financial performance as well as the climate
Barbara Kingsolver’s novel ‘Flight Behaviour’ tells the story of monarch butterflies who cannot use their normal winter site in Mexico because of a warming climate. In the book an entimologist asks what is the use of saving a world that has no soul: “Continents without butterflies, to seas without coral reefs, he meant. What if all human effort amounted basically to saving a place for ourselves to park?” The financial industry has been looking for ways to help save the soul of the planet through sustainable investing, which considers environmental, social and...
249 days ago,(2017/10/18)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Technology and Business Strategy Innovation in Finance with AI and Deep Learning
Deep learning, or the ability of machines to learn tasks using artificial neural networks, has been around since the mid-1960s. In recent years, however, with advances in computation and storage technologies enabling the large quantities of data required for effective neural networks to be rapidly processed, the use of deep learning is increasingly being explored across multiple industries and geographies. In this article, Mike O’Hara and Joel Clark of The Realization Group discuss the possible use cases of deep learning within financials services, as well as the challenges that arise...
265 days ago,(2017/10/02)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled The DevOps Journey: Winning the battle of hearts and minds
In this article The Realization Group investigate the increasingly popular development method of DevOps, focusing specifically on what kinds of organisational and cultural changes are involved in a successful transition that will deliver real benefits. There is no question that DevOps has gained buzzword status in the IT community. But how does a firm begin to adopt the approach and what are the biggest challenges along the way? Mike and Adam talk to a diverse group of experts, featuring IT specialists, consultants and corporate managers who are operating on the front line of the DevOps...
272 days ago,(2017/09/25)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Raising the Bar: Responding to the RegTech data management challenge
Banks and brokers might feel they are being pushed and pulled in different directions by multiple post-crisis regulatory reforms, but a common requirement across the new rules is for more detailed and timely data of known quality and provenance. To meet regulators’ expectations, banks must store, access, and process data on a scale never previously anticipated. As such, their technology executives are re-examining their operating infrastructures to ensure they have the storage and compute capabilities to operate effectively in the new, but still emerging, environment, looking not only...
286 days ago,(2017/09/11)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled For trading infrastructure, the buy-build question increasingly favours buy
In this article, Mike O’Hara and Adam Cox of The Realization Group look at the trend of financial firms – on both the sell side and the buy side – outsourcing their trading infrastructure to specialist providers at co-located data centres. The prospect of outsourcing such a vital part of a trading firm’s operations has enormous implications, from cost to performance to business models. Mike and Adam hear from Stéphane TyÄ, Co-founder of McKay Brothers, Ken Barnes, Senior Vice President of Options Technology and Bill Fenick, Strategy and Marketing Director at...
286 days ago,(2017/09/11)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Smarter Operations: Why Middle Office needs to become the New Front Office
In this article, Mike O’Hara and Adam Cox of The Realization Group look at the future of middle-office systems for banks and trading firms. Many of these companies are now relying on hodgepodge solutions, systems that essentially rest upon legacy technology and have been in need of modernisation for years. It’s hardly an optimum state of affairs and the impact can be enormous. To give a simple example: If a firm needs to overcompensate because its overnight collateral calculations may be ever so slightly off, it can result in millions of dollars’ worth of extra collateral...
286 days ago,(2017/09/11)
The Realization Group wrote a new blog post titled Roundtable Report - FX Flows to the East
Future growth in foreign exchange is widely expected to come from Asia rather than traditional western hubs. Financial Institutions and infrastructure providers need to make sure they are ready.
Magnetic fields cannot be seen by the human eye, but they create complex, powerful forces that can pull large materials together and push others apart with equal strength. Similar forces are at work in the foreign exchange market, where a range of factors appear to be drawing increased trading to eastern hubs such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai.
Speaking at an executive discussion in London on...
317 days ago,(2017/08/11)
The Realization Group uploaded a media item titled Testing - Darren Stocks
353 days ago,(2017/07/06)
