Fabrizio
Rossi
Biaggi
Schettino
....Italians!
Good
big swim report here:
Including
a chart where someone has done a lot of analysis.
Basically,
I think it says, 2011 were fast conditions, 2010 no bad, 2012 average, 2009 OK
and 2008 hard.
As
for me? I’ve done the swim in:
2009:
57m15s; placed 933/1,574
2010:
50m05s; 934/1,831
2011:
48m53s; 1,032/1,615
2012:
51m36s 793/1,384
Results
here:
The
one excuse I will make is I had a slow start. The old boys (or Boofheads) are
the fastest average swimmers, so they set us off at the back of the pack.
However this year they lumped all the 40-44 and 45-49 males together in a
‘monster’ final wave. Some 325 (23% of the race entrants), slap happy
boofheads, racing into the sea is pandemonium...you have surf, currents...and a
sea of arms and legs to punch your way through and over. Messy (and slow)!
Each
week I’m spoilt for choice on an image.
“The
Italians...” I couldn’t resist.
I
guess we all work within regulatory for policy constraints, be they external or
internal.
I
guess if you put a boy racer in charge of an ocean liner it’s not going to
work.
Same
applies for Fred Goodwin at RBS.
More
out of control riders here:
The
other piece of sensation news this week is the EMCF fee cut.
Yes,
yes, ABN AMRO has a 78% stake in EMCF but that’s not the story.
EMCF
fees are available to any market participant (open access) and if you do
volume, your fees are 0.001 euro cents.
That
is an unbelievable difference from where clearing fees were in 2006.
EMCF
was the first to offer competition in clearing fees and as volumes have
increased on the MTFs fees have consistently fallen at the clearing level.
Incumbents
have been forced to respond, late comers have relied on cross subsidies (and
loss leaders).
Despite
all this, clearing fees are being set for the industry at competitive and just
as importantly, sustainable levels.
If
anything, this is a huge advertisement, and a real case study, for the benefits
of competition.
So,
congratulations to EMCF...congratulations to the regulators that saw beyond the
cries of the incumbents and facilitated the invisible hand of Adam Smith which
allowed competition to take place....and of course congratulations to the
users. May your businesses flourish!
Meanwhile:
Lots
going on in Canada.
New
ASX data centre kicks off here next week.
TSE
glitch prompts closure of PTSs...not even giving liquidity a chance to shift.
NYSE
deal is sunk, but as was the forecast for 2011, the battle ground will shift to
derivatives.
EMIR
has a hic cup and Kondor finds a new owner. (License fee increases will be next
quarter?).
FSA
claim ‘modesty’ in their necessary 78 million fee increase...and on the other
side of the coin practitioners are less modest.
Maybe
Sir Goodwin, oops, just Freddy now...not to be confused with Freddie Flintoff
MBE (a cricket player who got an MBE for playing a jolly good game of cricket
against Aust)...could throw in a few pounds?
Speaking
of generosity, for the most generous interpretation of the term “Chef”, check
out some of our local CEOs.
CEO Cook Off, www.ceocookoff.com.au
Mind
you, they’re raising funds for a good cause.
They
actually get food to those that need it.
Check
out who you know, and give ‘em some dough!
I
can’t believe the 6 nations is upon us.
Usual
form.
France
wins at home, England go north to beat Scotland. Ireland, I want to win at
home....but they won’t.
Have
a great w/end all.
S
PLATFORMS
TMX
GROUP PREPS NEW EQUITY TRADING TECH
Hardware acceleration is a general term
that refers to the off-loading of processing work from server CPUs onto
specialized hardware.
The next generation trading technology,
which is called TMX Quantum XATM, will provide TMX Group equity trading
participants with dramatically enhanced speed and capacity as well as more
efficient order processing. It is expected that there will be a twenty-fold
reduction in median latency to sub-100 microseconds on order executions. The
new trading system is designed to be capable of handling 200,000 orders per
second. To augment these new capabilities, 10 Gb communication access will be
made available for the first time to Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX Venture
Exchange and TMX Select customers.
MAPLE
EXTENDS TMX OFFER DEADLINE
***
to 29th Feb, 2012
Details
of Maple's offer, including an update of the status of regulatory approvals,
are available at www.abetterexchange.com
New Canadian exchange sets April launch date
Canadian
alternative trading system (ATS) and dark pool operator Alpha Group will go
live on 2 April. The venue received approval from its primary regulator the
Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) on 6 December.
Canada's CSD holding up Maple bid for TMX
Competition concerns have pushed back Maple Group's bid for Canada's national exchange one month as regulators mull over pricing implications for the Canadian Depository for Securities (CDS).
Competition concerns have pushed back Maple Group's bid for Canada's national exchange one month as regulators mull over pricing implications for the Canadian Depository for Securities (CDS).
The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has announced that
its Sydney-based data centre will be open for equity trading from 6 February
2012.
Glitch at TSE No Payday for Alternative Venues
The
Japan Securities Dealers Association shut trading on alternative platforms SBI
Japannext and Chi-X Japan on concern shares couldn’t be priced fairly without
the main bourse
alternative
venues might not have received extra business yesterday even if the platforms
had been allowed to take the orders, according to SBI Japannext’s Sensaki. When
Tokyo went down, investors turned off their so-called smart- order routers,
which use computer programs to find the cheapest places to trade, he said. Many
of those algorithms don’t work without the main bourse as a reference point.
NYSE at 42% Size of CME Is Niederauer Dilemma as Deal Fails
Diverging
Margins
The advantage of derivatives trading can be seen in NYSE and CME’s financial statements. In the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2011, NYSE had net revenue of $2.04 billion and earnings of $506 million, for a profit margin of 25 percent, according to a company statement. CME had $2.54 billion in sales and $1.07 billion in profit, a 42 percent margin, the company said.
NYSE Euronext’s captures 68 cents per contract in its London-based NYSE Liffe derivatives business, compared with 4 cents for 100 shares in U.S. equity trading, according to a third-quarter presentation from the company. The operating margin for futures and options is 57 percent, about 13 percentage points higher than it is for equities, the data show.
The advantage of derivatives trading can be seen in NYSE and CME’s financial statements. In the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2011, NYSE had net revenue of $2.04 billion and earnings of $506 million, for a profit margin of 25 percent, according to a company statement. CME had $2.54 billion in sales and $1.07 billion in profit, a 42 percent margin, the company said.
NYSE Euronext’s captures 68 cents per contract in its London-based NYSE Liffe derivatives business, compared with 4 cents for 100 shares in U.S. equity trading, according to a third-quarter presentation from the company. The operating margin for futures and options is 57 percent, about 13 percentage points higher than it is for equities, the data show.
After Veto, Europe's Exchanges Gird for Derivatives Battle
The EU blocked the Deutsche Börse-NYSE
Euronext merger to promote competition in futures and options. Rivals including
the LSE Group and BATS Chi-X Europe will be only too happy to oblige.
http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=2971814&LS=EMS609697
Bright start for European dark pools (AND BCNs) in 2012
Dark pool trading rocketed in Europe during
January, with turnover on non-displayed multilateral trading facilities (MTFs)
reaching their second highest total ever, according to data from Thomson Reuters
Equity Market Share Reporter.
According to US boutique brokerage
Rosenblatt, which conducts a monthly analysis of dark pool trading in the US
and Europe, Deutsche Bank’s SuperX broker crossing network (BCNs) was the
largest non-displayed trading facility in December 2011, trading €363 million
daily or 0.65% of overall trading for the month. Credit Suisse’s Crossfinder
BCN was in second place, with €354.4 million traded daily (0.63% of overall
trading).
BCNs operate under a different regulatory
structure to dark MTFs and are not included in the Thomson Reuters data.
The regulatory structure for BCNs is likely
to undergo a substantial shift as a result of MiFID II, which is currently
being debated by the European Parliament.
Under the new regime, BCNs could be
formally categorised for the first time as organised trading facilities, a new
venue class created by the latest version of the directive, prohibited from
using proprietary capital and be subject to more stringent post-trade reporting
standards. If implemented, the changes are likely to take affect during 2014.
CLEARING
EMCF
CUTS CLEARING RATES
Participants
clearing more than 2 million trades per day will be charged €0.001 per trade
for all of their business. The new fee equates to a lower rate than the
clearing and netting fee for the same amount of business in the US and anywhere
else in the world.
EMIR faces yet another delay over CCPs
European regulators and legislators have
once again failed to reach an agreement on key legislation designed to overhaul
OTC derivatives markets.
A key sticking point for completing the
high level text of the European market infrastructure directive (EMIR) remains
the role that the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) would have
in resolving disputes that may arise between national regulators in terms of
central counterparty (CCP) authorisation.
VISTA
EQUITY PARTNERS COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF THOMSON REUTERS RISK UNIT Vista Equity
Partners has completed the acquisition of Thomson Reuters' trade and risk
management technology business, re-branding the unit Turaz.
***
Kondor finds a new home
Bursa Malaysia Readies New Clearinghouse For 1Q Launch
POLICY
Buy-side leads doubts over Brussels’ consolidated tape plans
MiFID II suggested three routes to a
consolidated tape for European equities – commercial, mandated or call for
tender. In its proposal, the Commission said it preferred the commercial model,
where businesses compete to market their own tape.
“We would have preferred a tender process
for a single operator solution to avoid the possibility of [vested interests]
arising,” asset management firm Blackrock said in its response to a call for
comment on MiFID II by Markus Ferber MEP, rapporteur to the Economic and
Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) of the European Parliament.
Buy-side fears were further confirmed by
the Investment Management Association (IMA), a UK trade body.
“We support commercial solutions for
consolidated tape providers (CTPs) in principle but fear that there will be no
sufficient commercial driver for comprehensive CTPs to emerge,” the IMA said in
its submission to Ferber.
Questionnaire
on MiFID/MiFIR 2 by Markus Ferber MEP
or
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has today
announced its proposed Annual Funding Requirement (AFR) for 2012/13.
This
is likely to be the FSA’s final AFR before it splits into the Prudential
Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), in 2013.
The
FSA regulates the financial services industry and has four objectives under the
Financial Services and Markets Act 2000:
1.
maintaining market confidence;
2.
securing the appropriate degree of protection for consumers;
3.
fighting financial crime; and
4.
contributing to the protection and enhancement of the stability of the UK
financial system.
City's watchdog
hit the financial services industry with an inflation-busting 15.6 per cent
rise in annual fees.
The
Financial Services Authority's latest annual funding requirement has jumped by
nearly £78m to £578.4m as the regulator faces the added costs of splitting
itself up into two bodies from 2013 and overhauling its IT software.
The
Financial Services Authority's latest annual funding requirement has jumped by
nearly £78m to £578.4m as the regulator faces the added costs of splitting
itself up into two bodies from 2013 and overhauling its IT software.
THE TRADE NEWS: ASIC Algo Plans May Require Rethink
Madden also stressed the need to harmonise
Australia’s securities market rules with international standards. “It's
important that whilst there are appropriate and robust regulations to deal with
trading, it has to be done in such a way that will allow global firms to have a
consistent approach across the globe, rather than having to take a piecemeal
approach to regulation,” he added.
ASIC released ‘Consultation Paper (CP) 168:
Australian equity market structure: Further proposals’ on 20 October 2011 and
the deadline for comment has been extended to 20 February. The consultation
seeks industry feedback on ASIC’s proposed market integrity rules on
high-frequency trading, volatility controls for extreme price movements,
pre-trade transparency and price formation, best execution and market data
supervision
FESE POSITION ON THE MiFID II PROPOSAL
FESE represents 46 exchanges active in Europe.
FESE members’ business has been radically influenced by MiFID I, which opened many of their services to full competition. FESE members support open and fair competition on level terms.
The
financial crisis has shown the strength
of regulated market infrastructures and
the importance of the safeguards provided on FESE members’ platforms. The gaps identified as a
result of experience of MiFID I and of the crisis should be addressed as part of the review of MiFID to ensure ongoing provision of orderly markets.
***
More a lobby paper for vested interests than a robust debate on best practice
and innovation
FESE
members here (note: No MTFs)
PARTICIPANTS
MF Global U.K. Clients to Get 26 Cents on Dollar
Payout
MF Global Holding Ltd.'s U.K. administrators plan to make the first payment to British clients of the failed brokerage, returning 26 cents on the dollar. KPMG LLP, the administrators of MF Global's U.K. unit, said the figure was the most it could return at this stage because of "continued uncertainty" as to who can claim a share of the so- called client money pool.
MF Global Holding Ltd.'s U.K. administrators plan to make the first payment to British clients of the failed brokerage, returning 26 cents on the dollar. KPMG LLP, the administrators of MF Global's U.K. unit, said the figure was the most it could return at this stage because of "continued uncertainty" as to who can claim a share of the so- called client money pool.
Bloomberg offers unrestricted data distribution technology
Citi confirms date for prop desk closure
Citi
has confirmed that its Principal Strategies proprietary equity trading division
will close in a week as a result of the impending introduction of the Volcker
rule.
6
February would be the last day of operation for the Principal Strategies group
CITI
AND AUSSIE CUSTODY MARKET SHARE
As of June 30, 2011 Citigroup’s assets under custody were $123
billion out of a total of $1.86 billion of assets under management in the
country, a market share of 6.6 per cent.
SPAM
and those ‘Nigerian’ emails are a side effect of the digital age. Usually the
sending address is enough to give the game away...but this week one sender
caught my attention... lusciousmango03[at]aol.com....attractive as this
sounds...I just have a hunch she’s(?) not really giving away free Southwest
Airline flights.
