On Thursday May 1 the CFTC released an eagerly awaited clarifying document outlining when and how package trades would be required on SEF.  Packaged transactions will be phased in by type from May 15th through November 15th, and to deal with...

Last week I did an interview with the guys at DerivAlert about where we've come and where we're going.  The result was a pretty concise overview of our thoughts on SEFs, US Treasury's, corporate bonds and European regulatory reform, so we...

Spot FX trading volumes in the first quarter of 2014 dropped 25-30% from the same period last year.  From a macro-economic perspective, the reasons are relatively clear. In 2013, FX trading volumes were inflated by a surge of activity in the...

The biggest finding in our latest report (available to market structure and technology customers) on FX electronic trading was nothing. Our 1500+ interviews with global FX users showed continued growth in electronic trading (74% of users...

If you work in institutional finance you’ve heard talk of market structure. Not only are there entire conferences dedicated to the topic, but most of the participants at those conferences— banks, asset managers, researchers—send their heads of...

Capital is expensive and getting more expensive. But the problem is proving a much harder one to manage in Europe, with European banks continuing to deleverage and already complying with the principles of Basel III while US banks have their capital...

Turned out the first week of mandatory SEF trading was a Big Bang, just in the wrong direction. Reported SEF volumes for interest rate swaps fell off a cliff for the week of February 17th, cliff signdropping 64% (revised down slightly as new data...

We all know that the massive reduction in dealer inventories and the cost of capital has had a huge negative impact on liquidity in the corporate bond market. While the primary market has helped soften the blow, that crutch isn’t going to be here...

Tuesday February 18th is certainly a big deal. Requiring swaps to trade on registered platforms was one of the primary tenets of derivatives reform since shortly after the Lehman big bang theory bankruptcy, and finally the day has arrived. This is...

We spoke to just under 500 portfolio managers and traders globally to see what they’re doing with and what they think about OMSs, trading-system EMSs and TCA platforms for Equities, FX and Fixed Income. This is not a space of dramatic year on year...