Profile of Ivy Schmerken
Editor at Large
Member Since: 5/8/2014
Author
Blog Posts: 2629
Posts: 638
Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad number of topics including high frequency trading, algorithmic trading strategies, market structure, electronic trading in fixed income , colocation in data centers, Dodd-Frank regulation and the new derivatives landscape. Ivy meets with software companies and other innovators and writes about cloud computing, OMS/EMSs and other financial technologies.
Articles by Ivy Schmerken
1/27/2015
After more than two decades of writing for Wall Street & Technology, I am leaving the media brand. It's time to reflect on our mutual history and the road ahead.
1/14/2015
In the wake of Morgan Stanley firing a financial adviser for stealing information on 350,000 wealth management clients, experts say financial firms need to "cloak and contain" access to valuable data.
1/7/2015
Clearpool Execution Services will use Iris technology to improve the way institutional orders are handled and prioritized in different execution venues.
1/7/2015
Capital Markets Outlook 2015: The SEC is conducting a broad review of US equity market structure, but the most important proposals are the tick-size pilot, maker-taker rebates, dark pools, and order routing transparency.
1/5/2015
Capital Markets Outlook: With more than a year of SEF trading up and running, swap participants are looking at standardized Market Agreed Upon or "MAC" swap products, to fuel anonymous order book trading next year.
1/5/2015
Benjamin Smith joined IEX as the private trading venue's head of information security last week. In a Q&A, Smith discusses his new role, Regulation SCI, and what exchanges and ATSs can do to combat hackers in 2015.
1/5/2015
Capital Markets Outlook 2015: Drawing on consumer tech examples like Spotify and Amazon, a new wave of fixed-income trading platforms is determined to help the buy side find liquidity in corporate bonds.
12/12/2014
Social media has mainly been a marketing effort in financial services, and many firms are not tracking ROI. Yet, some are deriving value from analysis of social data, whether it's sentiment analysis for trading or credit risk in lending.
12/9/2014
Tradition's SEF Trad-X has seen a sharp increase in trading activity since September for USD interest-rate swaps on its central limit order book, citing its hybrid voice and electronic platform as a differentiator.
12/8/2014
Some market professionals thought Apple's 3% price decline last Monday was a flash crash or an algo run wild. Quants at Rosenblatt Securities analyzed the tick data and came up with a different interpretation.
12/5/2014
Intercontinental Exchange plans to begin trading swap futures in 2015 in credit and interest rates based on intellectual property licensed from Eris Exchange. ICE will offer a rival product to cleared OTC swaps.
12/3/2014
Centerbridge Partners LP will look to expand IPC's Unigy software-based trading platform and its mission-critical data and network services.
12/2/2014
As Jefferies beefs up its algorithmic trading business, the broker chose Markit to provide trading metrics and reports to the buy side.
12/1/2014
Platform providers are drawing upon experience with high-frequency trading and fintech to create infrastructure for virtual currency exchanges.
11/25/2014
A group of heavyweight asset managers has collaborated on a solution for non-US trade confirmations and affirmations that is fueling interest in FIX for post-trade use as an alternative to Omgeo's Central Trade Manager.
11/24/2014
The nonprofit industry standards body said it has combined all initiatives related to the support of FIX for high-performance trading and market data under a single working group.
11/21/2014
Demand for stock calendar event data services is increasing among quants. Wall Street Horizon appointed Bruce Fador as president to push growth into other sectors.
11/19/2014
REDI's independent trade management platform will provide access to Evercore ISI's electronic execution platform for US equities.
11/18/2014
With the return of volatility last month, exchange volumes surged 29%, off-exchange share slipped, and one dark pool closed up shop, according to analyst market structure reports.
11/13/2014
To navigate increasingly complex markets, WallachBeth Capital hired quant trading veteran Matthew Rowley as CTO, who previously worked at Credit Agricole Cheuvreux and financial software provider Fidessa.
11/12/2014
Finra CEO Richard Ketchum outlines plans for requiring brokers that use fixed-income "RFQ systems" to provide more pre-trade price transparency to customers. In equities, Finra wants to register firms involved in designing algorithms.
11/11/2014
SEC Chair Mary Jo White discussed HFT and the agency's plans for equity market structure in 2015 in a video interview with Bloomberg Market Makers at the SIFMA annual meeting.
11/7/2014
Nasdaq OMX's plan to move the SIP to the INET technology platform, coupled with ongoing reductions in latency and plans for hot/hot disaster recovery, influenced the committee's final decision.
11/5/2014
Nasdaq will open a point of presence (PoP) in Chicago, enabling traders in the midwest to connect with the eSpeed bond trading platform as well as Nasdaq cash equity and equity derivatives markets.
11/4/2014
BATS hires Concannon, a former Nasdaq executive, as it continues to integrate Direct Edge and looks to build upon recent successes in equities and options.
11/3/2014
The move is the latest step taken by BGC Partners to grow its derivatives trading business while competition is heating up among D2D and D2C platforms.
11/3/2014
With volumes picking up and the IPO market strong, US financial services professionals are very confident about receiving a bonus this year, and 60 percent are expecting an increase.
10/29/2014
A Fidelity survey found that investors relying upon mobile finance apps are more engaged with their finances, with over 40% earning a 20%-plus return over the past 12 months.
10/27/2014
To find natural liquidity from investors, ITG launched an optimizer that learns from its trades to allocate different order type combinations across 25 dark venues.
10/23/2014
DTCC released its recent "Systemic Risk Barometer" survey showing that cyber risk is among the global financial industry's top five concerns, along with the impact of new regulations.
10/22/2014
Droit Financial Technologies appointed former ISDA CEO Robert Pickel, fintech specialist Mark Beeston, and former UBS executive Seth Cohen to join a new advisory board that will broaden the conversation about derivatives compliance.
10/21/2014
Alpha was a front-office term, but now banks and brokers are looking to the middle and back office for profitability.
10/17/2014
Wall Street professionals discussed a plan to create multiple competing aggregators for the Nasdaq SIP as a way to strengthen the market infrastructure.
10/17/2014
Citing conflicts of interest in the voting process for a key market data feed, SIFMA letter presses for answers and for brokers and asset managers to get a seat at the table.
10/15/2014
A financial markets trade body is bringing a model code of conduct to participants who work in interest rates, FX, commodities, and derivatives. After a series of fines, can this help banks repair their reputations?
10/13/2014
S3 will distribute counterparty analytics through Portware to help hedge funds and asset managers understand the costs of prime services, swaps, and custody services.
10/10/2014
The startup has launched an options search engine that filters and analyzes thousands of strategies based on an investor's stock price forecast, trade budget, and risk/reward parameters.
10/8/2014
Buy-side concerns over insider trading led Castine Consulting and Integrity Research to launch a cloud-based platform that standardizes due diligence questionnaires posed to research providers.
10/7/2014
The real-time platform is geared to Millennials who can use its social media features to share and compare returns with friends and other investors.
10/6/2014
The interdealer broker hired fixed income technology expert Eric Hirschhorn to serve as chief information officer to expand its hybrid and electronic trading businesses.
10/6/2014
Raymond James’s financial advisers are becoming more productive, partially through the use of new technology and data analytics provided by the firm’s IT group, led by Vincent Campagnoli.
10/3/2014
After a 10-year building boom that led to excess capacity, datacenters with access to matching engines and liquidity are gaining the edge, Tabb Group reports.
10/2/2014
Fidelity Labs is running a pilot on LinkedIn that lets financial advisers interact with their book of customers. That's just one example of how the tech incubator is seeding ideas and developing future products for its parent company.
10/2/2014
The low-latency trading race is almost over, but the in-memory analytics race is just beginning.
9/30/2014
At the InformationWeek Leadership Summit at Interop New York, David Saul, chief scientist of State Street, said companies must tap their employees for innovation, or they are wasting resources.
9/30/2014
The most influential time in Rob Park's career was the 10 months it took to take IEX from conception to production.
9/30/2014
S&P Capital IQ and Kuberre Systems are launching Event Fusion, a new product that monitors multiple real-time feeds and alerts investors to critical data impacting their securities holdings.
9/29/2014
The jury is still out on whether SEF rules will produce a positive outcome for the swap market, and some participants are shifting to alternative instruments, according to Tabb Group's fourth SEF Industry Barometer.
9/25/2014
Fund managers need to consider who holds the encryption keys for cloud-based email, or face potential legal risks.
9/24/2014
The world's largest money manager outlined steps for improving liquidity in corporate bond markets with expanded e-trading protocols and bond standardization.
9/22/2014
The agency broker is giving the buy side a choice of routing a percentage of an order to IEX while designating a percentage to go through ConvergEx's Darkest, an algo connected to 20+ unlit venues.
9/22/2014
As institutions struggle to execute large orders, PDQ ATS is introducing Auction1, a new auction for equities that pauses orders up to one second so it can aggregate liquidity from fragmented markets.
9/18/2014
Tradeweb's SEF saw a twenty-fold increase in interest-rate derivatives trading volume in the first two weeks of September, while Tabb Group looks for signs of summer doldrums turning around.
9/18/2014
In a speech this week, SEC Commissioner Dan Gallagher said the SEC must act on the opaque fixed income markets and put Reg NMS under the microscope.
9/16/2014
Algomi is helping sales traders find the other side of less liquid bond trades, so that banks can become more efficient at voice trading.
9/15/2014
Citing demand for an efficient hedging tool, TeraExchange has developed a Bitcoin swap product and a Bitcoin price index, to launch the first regulated Bitcoin derivatives platform.
9/12/2014
Eris Exchange licensed its swap futures methodology to the Montreal Exchange while setting a record for daily volume in its domestic swap futures contracts, buoyed by new buy-side entrants.
9/11/2014
Tabb Group announced Clarity, a venue and order routing analysis service, to help the buy side understand where and how orders are executed and handled in the fragmented stock market.
9/10/2014
PDQ ATS, a venue that recreates floor trading, executed more than 1 billion shares in August, averaging 50 million share per day in US equities, the venue's parent reported.
9/3/2014
After tripling its volume in less than a year, the dark-pool operator has gained venture capital backing to apply to become a full-fledged stock exchange.
9/2/2014
Cyber attacks have become inevitable, but companies that prepare for how to respond can "shrink the problem" and minimize the impact of any security breach.
8/28/2014
Hedge funds are bracing for SEC exams on cyber security preparedness in 2014, but do they need a chief information security officer?
8/28/2014
SmartStream tapped Tom Dalglish, an industry expert on reference data initiatives, to spearhead its back-office transformation services for global clients.
8/21/2014
With 21 swap execution facilities, and slowly increasing volumes, the marketplace is perfect for consolidation.
8/19/2014
Microwave data networks are going mainstream, and will level the playing field for all investors to access critical market data, said CEO of GTS, which entered a deal to sell StrikeNet to TMX Group.
8/12/2014
Buy-side firms want access to their full commission wallet so they can leverage the data in their broker vote software and factor in research related events, according to Markit.
8/8/2014
As banks and asset managers grapple with EMIR Phase II of European derivatives rules, LSEG's UnaVista emerges as a major player in post-trade, regulatory reporting.
8/6/2014
Statistics from the World Federation of Stock Exchanges show that equity trading volumes rose 10%, signaling a strong recovery for the first half of 2014.
7/31/2014
Data portal Quandl forms its first partnership with Nasdaq OMX, providing global indexes to a younger generation of financial analysts.
7/30/2014
Alternative funds selling to European investors must meet ESMA's strict guidelines for trader reporting, risk controls, and valuations -- similar to SEC's Form PF.
7/28/2014
The financial analysis platform is planning to launch a private platform for hedge funds seeking to keep their models private.
7/28/2014
High-ranking government officials continue to leave the CFTC, landing lucrative industry jobs.
7/25/2014
Asking a court to dismiss the NYAG's lawsuit, Barclays contends that highly sophisticated traders were not misled about high-frequency traders in its dark pool.
7/22/2014
In addition to regular audits, the SEC will start to scrutinize the cyber-security preparedness of market participants.
7/22/2014
To detect risks in electronic trading, Corvil is moving beyond latency management to help banks and exchanges run real-time analytics on petabytes of data that can be migrated to big-data systems.
7/18/2014
Only 25% of statements across the annuity, mutual fund, and brokerage sectors include a "personal rate of return," Dalbar's annual survey says.
7/17/2014
With the July 22 deadline looming, hedge funds are unprepared to meet the AIFMD data reporting requirements, and they worry about compliance costs, two studies say.
7/7/2014
As robo-advisers target independent investors with automated tools, TradeKing teamed with Morningstar's Ibbotson Associates to deliver professionally managed portfolios with low fees.
7/2/2014
New owner looks to expand the European trade-reporting service beyond the 40 investment firms and MTFs currently reporting trades to Boat.
6/30/2014
Reflecting its merger with Direct Edge, BATS Global Markets will offer a new direct data feed product with a unified view of aggregate quotes, trades, and optional depth information for all four equity exchanges it operates.
6/27/2014
New York State's lawsuit alleges that Barclays marketed the safeguards of its surveillance system to buy-side customers but actually favored high-frequency traders in its dark pool.
6/24/2014
Last week's Senate hearing explored conflicts of interest faced by brokers that receive payment for order flow and rebates for routing orders to certain trading venues, but many experts warned against immediate change.
6/17/2014
Most swap execution facilities have adopted the FIX Protocol to avoid fragmentation and allow for aggregation across multiple liquidity pools.
6/16/2014
The Roberts Group has hired a former Omgeo executive as CEO to expand the company, which already helps buy-side and sell-side firms reduce market data expenses between 10% and 30%.
6/11/2014
The regulator accused Wedbush of violating the Market Access Rule by allowing customers to set their own risk controls on proprietary and third-party platforms.
5/30/2014
Financial services executives are living in a "regulatory pressure cooker." Here's how executives are preparing for the new compliance requirements.
5/28/2014
On top of performance gains, the move positions Nasdaq OMX to offer electronic trading services to broker dealers who are still relying on voice brokerage and to expand the fixed-income product set.
5/22/2014
Don’t single out HFT for the market’s problems. Anyone who has worked in the industry during the past two decades has been complicit in corrupting the markets.
5/19/2014
The firm's post-trade platform is helping asset managers and FCMs handle "bunched order" allocations for interest rates swaps, a major pain point for the buy-side.
5/15/2014
The asset manager announced a strategic alliance with Tradeweb seeking to expand access to liquidity in rates and derivatives.
5/14/2014
Today, Nasdaq OMX announced an exclusive relationship with MasterCard to distribute its detailed reports on consumer spending activity to the buy-side community.
5/13/2014
After raising $35 million in a second funding round, the online site announced a platform for financial advisors along with plans to expand internationally and roll out asset allocation models to self-directed investors.
5/12/2014
Friedman is leaving the Carlyle Group to return to Nasdaq OMX, where she is reportedly a candidate to become the next CEO.
5/8/2014
TMC Bonds and Codestreet have launched the first dealer-only dark pool for US corporate bonds to mine data across a virtual balance sheet.
5/5/2014
An advocate for transparency in swaps trading, James Cawley, founder and CEO of Javelin SEF, is parting ways with the derivatives trading platform.
5/2/2014
Michael Bloomberg told CNBC the system "is not rigged," commissions are dramatically lower, and investors have choices of numerous venues where they can trade.
4/30/2014
News distributor PR Newswire has agreed to require customers to certify annually that the direct data feeds they receive will not be used for high frequency trading.
4/28/2014
Based on its expertise in options microstructure, VOLEX is unveiling a high-speed liquidity sweep capability for traders known as Take Out.
4/25/2014
A survey conducted by ConvergEx Group found that 70% of participants believe the US equity market isn't fair to all participants.
4/23/2014
As Liquidnet expands into fixed income, Garrett will focus on integrating the pending acquisition of Vega Chi into its ATS technology.