FX futures make up a tiny part of the global foreign exchange market today, but given recent changes, they and similar instruments have the potential to grow fast enough that FX may eventually follow in the footsteps of U.S. Treasuries—a market that...

US equity markets are always touted as the poster child for electronic trading, but our most recent electronic trading study results (see chart below) prove that view is somewhat misguided.  Driven primarily by new rules requiring index CDS...

The European Commission, ESMA and the FCA appear to be including fixed income in new payment for research requirements in MiFID II and EMiR by not explicitly excluding fixed income research. The question is whether a service can be viewed as an...

We might be getting a little bit closer to understanding whether or not the changes in the capital markets are cyclical or structural.  We view volatility - or the lack thereof - as a major factor impacting profitability across financial...

Market structure happenings have been fast and furious since 2009, and 2014 did not disappoint.  Mandatory SEF trading finally began, fixed income electronic trading continued its steady incline, the current shape of the US equity market was...

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...

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...

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...

Last week I did an interview with the guys at DerivAlert about where we've come and where we're going.  The result was a pretty concise overview of our thoughts on SEFs, US Treasury's, corporate bonds and European regulatory reform, so we...

Spot FX trading volumes in the first quarter of 2014 dropped 25-30% from the same period last year.  From a macro-economic perspective, the reasons are relatively clear. In 2013, FX trading volumes were inflated by a surge of activity in the...