As COVID-19 cases continue to rise, our first thoughts are for the victims, their families and the healthcare professionals fighting the disease. This pandemic is likely to lead to significant changes in the way we live our daily lives and to many...

In our role as market analysts, we are lucky enough to attend some of the most interesting industry events in capital markets and fintech. In that vein, Symphony asked us if we could attend their Innovate conference in New York this past fall and...

The fragmentation of the FX market structure is legendary, so consolidation within it is always of interest. Indeed, earlier this year we wrote a summary of all the mergers that have happened in the FX platform industry in the course of...

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...