Eurex to List Korean futures by 2010

Announcement builds on MoU signed in Jan 2007 (source: thetradenews.com).

Anti-Gaming Technology and Options Algos

The LSE's "dark pool" or "secret stock market" (designed for minimal information leakage, providing liquidity and anonymity) for pan-European equities trading has appointed John Wilson as Chief Executive. Due for release in Q1 2009, uncertainty over its future sprang from the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September (Baikal was due to use algo and anti-gaming technology from the now-bankrupt investment bank). Baikal was designed to allow the LSE to compete with the likes of Turquoise, BATS, DirectEdge and Chi-X.
In the options markets, Goldman's has released two new algorithms this year for the RediPlus platform (which it acquired in 2000 when it took over Spear, Leeds and Kellogg (SLK), an electronic trading pioneer), which also provides options analytics through its front-end (since 2004). In 2007, GS added electronic trading capability for China A-Shares (quoted in Renminbi and available only to mainlanders and selected FIIs).
Amongst ISVs, Aegis has a software product for inter-market making.

Retail IT Summit outlines trends and challenges

http://www.nrf-arts.org/

TIBCO

TIBCO is a major company in the financial software world. Some of the software categories they target in their latest marketing are Ajax RIAs, Complex Event Processing and SOA.

They have a software partner program (TPN = Tibco Partner Network) for organisations that produce solutions which complement Tibco technology.

Option Skew Finder from Optionistics

Check out options spreads here:
http://www.optionistics.com/f/option_spreads?op=vskew&ntm=1

What is MiFID? Implications for Systematic Internalisers.

MiFID is "Markets in Financial Instruments Directive". It has 2 goals:

• foster competition and "level playing field" for Europe's trading venues
• provide protection for investors and consumers of financial services

It replaced the Investment Services Directive on 1 November 2007. An interesting aspect of MiFID is its rules for Systematic Internalisers (SIs); firms that execute orders from its clients against its own book, or against orders from other clients. MiFID treats these firms as virtual exchanges, subject to the same transparency requirements (pre-trade and post-trade).

GPU for Derivatives Pricing

Harnessing the graphics processing unit (GPU) for calculations is the key to financial calculation speedup. So says SciComp, a Texan company specialising in Monte Carlo pricing models. A GPU is multi-core parallel processor (currently up to 240 cores) that can run parallel applications many times faster than a computer's CPU. Unlock the power of NVIDIA CUDA architecture. Now.

Credit Crunch Technology

Siobhan Chapman of ComputerWorld reports on IT investment at what was formerly the world's fourth largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers. In the quarter ending 31 August 2008, Lehman spent $308million on technology and communications (compared to $282million in the same quarter of 2007). Lehmans was also involved in a number of high-profile IT projects such as Project Baikal in conjunction with LSE to provide dark liquidity pools which was due for completion Q1 2009.

Katy Ring, principal at analysts The Bathwick Group, is reported to have made the following observations on the impact of the credit crisis. "In the IT services sector the short to medium term impact is likely to be seen in a flight to providers with scale and automation that can migrate clients to standardised platforms to enable them to operate at lower cost."

Online Volatility Management from Imagine

August 2008 - Piper Jaffray signs up to Imagine's derivatives ASP web service providing "real-time portfolio and risk management solutions". NY head trader (options desk) Greg Hurley's fave feature is the monitoring of real-time greeks. LSE-listed Henderson Global Investors has also recently become a client.