As COVID-19 plunged equity markets into turmoil in mid-March, volatility and trading volume exploded. At the same time, the health crisis forced brokers abruptly away from their trading floors, threatening to disrupt their ability to maintain...

Over the past six weeks, investors around the globe have experienced some of the most significant equities market volatility and disruption ever. Both the buy side and sell side have had to adjust quickly to market movements and continued...

On October 17, 2019, the SEC published its Statement on Market Structure Innovation for Thinly Traded Securities (the “Statement”). The SEC’s Statement recognizes that markets in liquid securities function well, but believes that the “one-size-fits-...

In our role as market analysts, we are lucky enough to attend some of the most interesting industry events in capital markets and fintech. In that vein, Symphony asked us if we could attend their Innovate conference in New York this past fall and...

When Regulation NMS (Reg NMS) came into effect in the mid-2000s, many benefits sprung to life immediately. For example, retail orders were provided protection, markets were made more interconnected, and decimalization was further codified under Rule...

Call them what you will – non-bank liquidity providers, principal trading firms, high frequency traders, electronic market makers – but this not-so-new-anymore breed of market participants is increasingly important to market liquidity,...

On Tuesday this week Nasdaq announced they were buying Quandl – an alternative data company. This follows a previous initiative within the global exchange and data company to organically build their own alternative data business. While the terms of...

The SEC recently announced that the Tick Size Pilot Program will expire[1] on September 28th. After two years, various studies have estimated that the cost to investors of this experiment range from $350mm[2] to $900mm[3]. And these estimates do not...

Last month retail investors jumped at the opportunity to own a piece of the hottest new tech stock, sending shares of Dropbox 35% higher from its IPO price. This kind of one-day price move is rarely seen in the stock market these days but has...

Trust means different things to different people. For instance, our nearly 4,000 recently conducted interviews for the CFA Institute’s “State of Investor Trust” research taught us that saying “I don’t know” improves trust between institutional...