August 2007
 Cover Story Your Guide to the Ultimate Trading Floor Firms are vying for prime real estate as they seek to build bigger and more technologically advanced trading floors. But what goes into building the ultimate trading floor? Sidebars Investment Banks Gobbling Up Trading Floor Space JPMorgan, Wachovia, Goldman Sachs building, buying, and expanding trading floors in New York and London. UBS Trading Floor Driven By Proprietary Technology About 80 percent of the trading technology used at the firm is internally developed. Anatomy of a Trading Floor: UBS  With 1,400 seats, 2,000 computers and 5,000 monitors, the UBS trading floor is noted by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest single trading floor in the world.The floor is home to traders, sales traders, quants, technology support, executives and others among its various groups, which include fixed income, commodities, currencies, money markets, derivatives, equities, international trading, algorithmic trading, direct market access, program trading and more. UBS manages more than 1,689,000 transactions a day. View the UBS photo gallery Electronic Marketplaces Nasdaq, Goldman Sachs Creating Electronic Trading Platforms for Private Equity As issuers turn to private markets to raise capital, Nasdaq and Goldman Sachs are introducing electronic trading platforms to build liquidity in unregistered offerings. Algorithmic Trading Dark Algorithms Solving Fragmentation Issues Broker-dealers are coming out with all flavors of liquidity-seeking dark algorithms to search dark pools and ensure customers are finding hidden liquidity. Data & Infrastructure Penny Pricing and Changed Margining Requirments Affect the Options Trading Dynamic The options penny pilot and new margining requirements are changing the options trading landscape, giving rise to the possibility of more ECN-like models. Research Watch OTC Derivatives Face Post-Trade Challenges OTC derivatives are burdened by volumes of paper, spreadsheets and deal tickets. So what will it take to automate the post trade landscape? |
 |
From The Editor Traders Aren't The Dominant Position, In Number, On Trading Floors Anymore Traders are vastly outnumbered on most trading floors today, giving way to trade support teams, sales traders, IT developers, quants and other support employees. Market Intelligence ITG, Instinet Beef Up Operations in Asia ITG and Instinet announce key executive appointments in Asia Pacific region as electronic trading heats up overseas. Morgan Stanley Ranks First Among Bulge Bracket Brokers Providing Electronic Trading Services Financial Insights Ranked Morgan Stanley as the top broker for providing DMA, algorithmic trading, TCA and EMS to buy-side clients. Trading Up HedgeStreet Lures Bakas from CBOT Thomas Bakas to help build out HedgeStreet's Institutional Platform. James Kearney Joins National Stock Exchance James Kearney brought to head up business development and client relations at NSX TowerGroup's Little-Gill Joins Linedata Gavin Little-Gill, Towergroup Research Area Director leaves to join Linedata Wall Street Industry Moves for Summer of 2007 • Tim Lind to perform strategic planning for Omgeo • Advent Software appoints Chris Flynn as VP of product management • Minor Huffman moves to Fxall • Rinando Soto joins EXE Castle Integration
Street Cred Multibroker Execution Platforms Slowly Gaining Adoption Customers seem to want open execution platforms, but multibroker execution platforms still fail to attain widespread adoption. Fortunately, we are starting to see the multibroker platform pushing forward. At The Close Private Markets Threaten Exhanges If companies continue to choose to raise money via private placements rather than via IPOs and electronic venues fuel a secondary market, what will the future hold for the exchanges? Advanced Trading Photo Contest  Are you a Tech Savvy Trader? Send us a photo of your desktop... Win an iPhone Do you have trading technology that allows you to trade across every asset in every country? Do you simply trade from your PDA? Do you have the oldest, most outdated technology of anyone in your company, but you still make it work? Tell us your story with a photo by sending us a picture of your trading workstation (please include information about the technology you use to trade). We'll be publishing the most interesting desktops. To enter, include a short description of why your workstation is unique with your name, title, company, and contact information. The winner gets an iPhone and a free pass to our Buy Side Trading Summit. (if you can't accept the iPHONE, we'll substitute it with $99 gift certificate to BestBuy.) Submit all photos to Judy Weber, with "Advanced Trading photo contest" in the subject line BY AUGUST 20. (Photos should be jpeg 2x3 at 300dpi) |