Chinese Checkers

I was listening to a debate on the radio yesterday morning about the Chinese authorities’ inability to keep their financial markets in check. Amidst all the discussion on manufacturing indices, circuit breakers and the like, everyone on the show seemed to be missing the real point. Chinese financial markets are the perfect melting pot for capitalism and communism. Nothing... Read More

The Dragon chasing its own tail

Few can have missed the carnage roiling Chinese stock markets recently. What’s interesting though is the emerging hubris from Western media that this is due to the intersection of communism and capitalism. The problem, they say, is that the purpose of markets is to allow free and open price discovery. However, they argue, a command economy like China can afford to tamper with... Read More

The changing face of Asian markets

Episode 5 of FragVision is now available featuring a discussion with Stephen Edge, Principal of Asia Etrading, about the key issues affecting Asian markets. As always, feel free to comment. Click here for the full list of FragVision episodes. .wistia_embed { height:364px !important; width:640px !important; }  Read More

All I want for Xmas is exchange consolidation/competition (delete as appropriate)

Despite all the announcements, press briefings and other hullabaloo it looks like the BATS/Chi-X deal is the only one that’s actually going to get done this year. SGX/ASX and LSE/TMX are just two of the higher profile casualties in the global game of exchange Monopoly. Add to this the conversations and negotiations that never reached the public domain and you have a dazzling array... Read More

MiFID II – 10 key takeaways that will give you indigestion

Just back from a two week trip around Asia and Australia that took in dark pool seminars in Hong Kong and Singapore and attendance at the FPL conference in Sydney. In my absence, it seems like the Eurocrats in Brussels have been busy as the official version of the widely leaked MiFID II proposals came out last Thursday. For a good roundup of the general themes look no further than... Read More

Welcome to FragINSIGHT

Our team of analysts has come up with a great new information source on fragmentation which we hope you’ll find useful. Having piloted FragINSIGHT last month we had a great response and lots of positive feedback so we decided to publish it on a regular basis – every couple of months to begin with – and make it freely available to all. As well as providing in-depth analysis... Read More

National interest or political self-interest?

Few can have missed the announcement that the proposed merger between ASX and SGX is about to be halted by Wayne Swan, Australia’s Treasurer. He cites the deal as contrary to the national interest which, of course, has been a concern raised by the Canadian authorities in their review of the proposed merger between their own TMX Group and the London Stock Exchange. I wonder... Read More

Aussie rules OK

The latest of our fragmentation forums landed in Sydney last week where around 150 industry executives got together to debate Australia’s future in the global fragmentation experiment. The event was well timed as the Australian Regulator, ASIC, published its long awaited consultation paper outlining its proposed new rules governing equities trading on the very same day. The... Read More

Aussie rules

For anyone that doesn’t know, Aussie rules football is a highly physical contact sport that combines elements of rugby and football and is a major participant and spectator sport in Australia. One of the things that makes the game so interesting (and dangerous) is the absence of an offside rule which makes it very hard to predict where any likely ‘contact’ may come... Read More

Asia Fragments or does it?

I participated in a series of Fragmentation Forums in Asia last week. Just like previous events in Tokyo the events in Hong Kong and Singapore were very well attended showing that interest in fragmentation is now very much a global phenomenon. One of the key messages that seemed to come out was that offering better execution doesn’t have to be driven by a regulatory mandate.... Read More

Welcome to Global Fragmentation

As you can see, the clever guys at Fidessa Labs have been pretty busy over the summer. They’ve added coverage for the USA, Canada, Japan and the rest of Asia – all in all around 200,000 individual stocks and indices (and growing!) to provide a truly global view of fragmentation. The new site also provides further insight into the world-wide experiment that is going on in... Read More

Chats or BIX Europe – the shape of things to come?

Few can have missed the reports that BATS Global Markets is believed to be in negotiations to buy Chi-X Europe. There is a certain logic for closer ties between the two as they both share a number of the same owners. The timing may also be significant as the fall-off in European volume will have affected the alternative venues far more (they typically run at around breakeven and... Read More

Latency Wars – The Empire Strikes Back

Few can have missed the announcement this week that the LSE’s new low latency platform, Millennium Exchange, will be up and running in September. This comes just months after its acquisition of the Sri Lankan firm, Millennium IT, which supplies the technology and is testimony to the new thinking now taking place at the LSE. The same news item also mentions that the LSE has... Read More

Fragmentation Fever Goes East

Looks like 2010 is going to be a pretty interesting year in the battle for liquidity between the established exchanges and the more recently established MTFs and dark pools. It also looks like fragmentation fever is likely to spread eastward, too. This is being driven by a number of factors that include technology, regulation and commercial opportunism. The introduction this week... Read More