Another year down. We're a year further from the Lehman bankruptcy, a year further from the signing of Dodd-Frank and a year closer to the full implementation of Basel III. But before we start looking ahead, let's look back at the year in market...

Early in November I chaired the FTF DerivOps conference in NY.  The conversation in 2014 was a lot more about the market than it was at my first DerivOps in October 2008, when all we spoke about was what was wrong with the OTC derivatives...

I’m not a great fan of regulation for regulation’s sake. While this is too strong and cursory a judgment on what has been happening in the US and Europe for the past few years, some suggested regulatory changes make you wonder. For instance,...

High costs can be a barrier to success for any swap execution facility (SEF), but there’s more to it than that. Based on our conversations with the buy side, simple fee models are preferable. Thankfully most major SEFs have taken a transpar­ent...

A reduction in systemic risk is one great benefit of global financial reform; another is the increasing volume of data made available to market participants and observers.  Even still, finding and deciphering that public data is often easier...

Market structure changes in the bond market appear to be happening organically.  Shocking I know. Rewind back seven years to 2007.  Market structure research was primarily focused on technology innovation, evolving business models and a...

I'm of the belief that the regulatory changes with the biggest long term impact are those related to the cost of capital.  Basel III, CRD IV and whatever the US regulators ultimately decide will prove to be both the carrot and the stick...

Over the last few weeks many have speculated that low volatility must mean that investors are complacent. As I was writing this post, in fact, an email came through about a new volatility study from ConvergEx showing that half of their ...

On October 2 market participants requesting price quotes for an order via a SEF will have to ask a minimum of three dealers to respond rather than the current minimum of two (although in neither case are those dealers required to respond to the...

Sales trader relevance has been debated for more than a decade as buy-side driven execution algorithms and trading tools have made self-service trading ubiquitous. Despite the ability of institutional investors to trade via cheaper self-directed...