The FT has a good article describing the amount of data the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission received from Goldman after a request for information about its mortgage-backed security trading activities. (Essentially a rather … cough … large amount.) While Goldman is hardly playing nice, the more serious issue highlighted in the article is how [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Financial Markets'
“… and on fax page # 1,932,765,358 paragraph 3 …”
June 11th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets, Usability
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” … the computers have gone wild”
June 7th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets
A co-worker sent along this link. It’s a video about how quants and computers are changing Wall Street and, more importantly, the very nature of banking. It’s a bit over the top, has weird character intros in German where the rest of the video is in English, and the main theme (bankers are ruining the [...]
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Trading precognition
June 5th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets
The WSJ had an interesting story (subscription required) last week about how some traders appear to be getting a edge by receiving stock price data before the wider market. The article features an appearance by Themis (who wrote a paper I discussed in an earlier blog post), as well as this description of how TFS [...]
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Toxic trading
May 26th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Financial Markets
In a conversation with a friend the other day about the merits (or lack thereof) of high-speed computerized trading, I recalled this paper, Toxic Equity Trading Order Flow on Wall Street (pdf) from Themis Trading. It decries the profits earned by high speed trading firms that result from better and faster computers, taking advantage of [...]
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Swap lines
May 10th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets, Market Definitions
I read this morning in the WSJ that in addition to loans from the IMF and European governments to help bail out Greece, the Fed is pitching in with swap lines. After reading that I thought it would be useful to link to the Fed’s recent paper describing how swap lines work. The Federal Reserve’s [...]
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Kids need their candy, banks need their money, countries need their debt
May 9th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets, Market Definitions
Paddy Hirsch looks at the role of counter party risk and how it’s becoming a hot topic again due to the recent debt crisis in Europe. Counterparty risk from Marketplace on Vimeo. The compelling, perhaps scary point, is that what we see now happening in Europe is pretty much what happened in 2008 when (as [...]
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Stockholm syndrome is really just Customer Value creation at work!
April 26th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets
Ahh, the power of words. We knew that sooner or later the failure of the rating agencies to separate their needs from the needs of their clients would rear it’s ugly head in the Goldman Abacus fiasco. The WSJ (subscription required) does a nice job of summarizing the panic occurring inside the rating agencies as [...]
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Yes, your website’s usability matters
April 13th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets, Usability
From the WSJ (subscription required), in an article about Morgan Stanley’s attempt to regain it’s competitive edge, we see this quote (emphasis mine): To make up lost ground, Morgan Stanley is revisiting clients that used to slip through the cracks. “They are courting my business,” says Mr. Atteberry, whose firm manages $13 billion in assets. [...]
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CLOs Explained
March 18th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets, Market Definitions
More geeky awesomeness from Marketplace’s Paddy Hirsch. This time he wrestles CLOs, or Collateralized Loan Obligations, into submission, making them understandable even to yours truly. And he gets extra credit for touching on the syndication of loans. CLOs from Marketplace on Vimeo. If video doesn’t float your boat, then you can always try Wikipedia’s take [...]
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Movie futures
March 11th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets, Prediction Markets
From the FT we learn that there will be not one, but two new movie exchanges where speculators and hedgers can bet on the profitability of movies: the Cantor Fitzgerald offering, HSX (launching sometime in late April, we assume), and something call the Trend Exchange, (coming out later this month). Why these exchanges? From the [...]
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