We recently published new research examining the use of Fixed Income ETFs by institutional investors.  Our analysis found that the increasing acceptance of ETFs as an institutional (rather than retail) investment tool coupled with challenged...

Excel is the biggest killer app of all time.  Yeah, web browsers are pretty useful and Instagram was sold for $1 billion, but when it comes to managing numbers nothing can touch Excel.  This is why global financial markets continue to...

A crisis is a crisis because most people didn't see it coming. Unexpected events freaks people out causing a bad chain of events - a crisis. So despite evidence that a liquidity crisis is on the horizon in the bond market, wide spread recognition...

Our recent report, “Equity Trade Commissions: Rates Vary Broadly Across and Within Markets,” highlighted an interesting finding from a Greenwich Associates study: average bundled commission rates on equity trades are surprisingly consistent across...

Larger institutions in Japan now execute only roughly 41% of trades as traditional single stock high-touch trades, well down from 48% in 2011. This reflects low touch single stock trades rising from 33% of trading volume to 36% and an expected 40%...

Central bank policy shouldn't really be part of the market structure story.  Market structure is about regulatory change, technology innovation and market reactions to the evolving competitive landscape.  But in 2015, central bank policy...

Our conversations with dealers over the past few months have left us wondering if volume weighted market share is the right metric for gauging success in fixed income dealing.  In past years market share always brought with it bragging rights,...

The market has been talking about this since at least 2009:  swaps clearing will reduce systemic risk and take most of the counterparty risk out of the swaps market.  Yet despite this risk reduction, regulators still seem determined...

The European Commission, ESMA and the FCA appear to be including fixed income in new payment for research requirements in MiFID II and EMiR by not explicitly excluding fixed income research. The question is whether a service can be viewed as an...

We might be getting a little bit closer to understanding whether or not the changes in the capital markets are cyclical or structural.  We view volatility - or the lack thereof - as a major factor impacting profitability across financial...