Fidessa's profile - HFT Review

The recently proposed cap on European dark trading has caused quite a stir. It also illustrates how MiFID II policy-making has descended into almost Eurovision song contest levels of farce. The basic idea is to put a cap (currently proposed at 8%) on the level of trading that occurs away from lit markets. The rationale for this is to protect the regulator’s precious price formation process and so it sensibly excludes large block orders that wouldn’t have traded on an exchange anyway. But, bizarrely, the current proposal is for an absolute limit regardless of whether trading off exchange...

(6 days ago)

Fidessa wrote a new blog post titled All set for a clear summer

There was an interesting footnote to the FT article on NYSE Euronext’s final shareholders’ approval of the ICE deal yesterday. It talked about how ICE Clear will be taking over clearing for Liffe as of 1st July. This is more than just a bit of corporate housekeeping and may well shape whether we really see competition in European derivatives trading. Right now Liffe clears through LCH and yes, this is the same clearing house that Nasdaq’s new derivatives market NLX will be using. So there is a big pile of open interest sitting at LCH which will either have to migrate to ICE...

(15 days ago)

Fidessa wrote a new blog post titled A question of life and SEF

There has been a lot of debate around the role of SEFs in the global derivatives market. Some commentators are even claiming that the whole concept is dead and buried before the rules have even been finalised. But debating the viability or otherwise of SEFs is completely missing the point. The right question is how will standardised and custom derivatives contracts trade and clear in a post Dodd-Frank/EMIR world? What these regulations are doing is removing an artificial barrier that has separated futures and OTC workflows for more than 40 years. This has the potential to upset the whole...

(49 days ago)

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