Category: MDI-First WordOn 18 Apr 2008 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight 
Tom Glocer’s Thomson deal finally reached completion this week, just under a year after initial plans were outlined by the two companies. You’ll doubtless recall that we interviewed Glocer for our A-Team IQ magazine – precisely one year to the day ahead of the April 17 close. Glocer hasn’t done a major interview since.
On 13 Mar 2008 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
Ever ready to keep us all on our toes, our market data marketplace is undergoing a convergence that will, once again, revert market data to the mainstream of the trading environment. As Market Data Insight readers will know, competition, regulation, cost issues and technological development have altered the trading technology landscape beyond recognition. And this has all happened so quickly that there’s been little time to sit back and take a look at what it all means.
On 15 Feb 2008 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
There seems to have been a bit of flapping in the marketplace around Reuters’ and Thomson’s recent decision to pull back from the original plan to brand the combined Thomson Financial and Reuters core market data and trading technology businesses as ‘Reuters’. Thomson apparently has determined, with the help of outside consultants, naturally, that to drop the Thomson name from that business segment would erode some of the value in the proposed merger.
On 30 Jan 2008 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
It’s been 20 years since your trusty editor-in-chief entered the market data business in earnest, and still the business continues to amaze.
Yes, it was in January 1988 – just three months or so after an earlier incarnation of Black Monday – that we left the comfort of Brussels and the Wall Street Journal/Europe for the rough and tumble of London – and of Online Finance newsletter. And what a newsletter it was. Our first issue quoted Brian Traquair – then of I.P. Sharp, now of Sungard Capital Markets & Investment Banking, and Bill Lupien – then just departing Instinet, now on the board of Skyler.
On 12 Dec 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
… is a very popular phrase, it seems. Not only was it the prefix of the title of A-Team’s seminal research report on the marketplace for low latency infrastructure earlier this year, but it also “inspired” research by others who somehow couldn’t think of another analogy to get across the idea of moving data very quickly from one place to another.
On 28 Nov 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
Could it be that news of Bloomberg B-Pipe’s demise is premature? Could be indeed. Why are people suggesting Bloomberg has called time on its somewhat belaboured effort to break into the data feed business? The answer, it seems, is a widespread belief in the old adage that there’s no smoke without fire.
On 23 Oct 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
Sitting on a panel discussing MiFID in a northern suburb of Copenhagen the other week, we asked the audience why they thought the MiFID framers – as we like to call them – didn’t prescribe the creation of a single consolidated repository-type feed of real-time trade and quote data akin to the one that works so well in the U.S., the Consolidated Tape/Quotation Systems. (Remember Tom Haley’s double-peaked baseball cap anyone?) After all, we reasoned, the U.S. long ago decided that there was no benefit in allowing commercial gain from the supply of consolidated information, a view of which is essentially to the workings of orderly markets, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
On 01 Sep 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
Your loyal editor-in-chief was saddened to hear of the death late last month of Hilly Kristal. Hilly, you’ll recall, founded CBGB, birthplace of punk, on the Bowery in New York’s East Village, which itself was closed last year - like all good things in Manhattan these days, the victim of a dispute over, yep, you guessed it, rent.
On 01 Aug 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
Your loyal editor-in-chief enjoyed recounting, quite often, his highly amusing quip that he represented the earliest and best example of integration between Dow Jones and Telerate. Back in the early 1980s, as a young editorial assistant on the Monitor Desk of the Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels, one of his late-night functions was to punch in the digits 7676 et al to a Telerate slave screen keypad, print out the latest U.S. Treasury rates, and re-key them into the Journal’s galleys for publication in the paper the following day. Integration or what?
On 01 Jul 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
How do you know when a company’s for sale?
One good dead giveaway is an explosion in their marketing materials, advertising and appearances at industry events. A robust marketing budget often accompanies the decision to ‘explore strategic options’ - one of our favourite euphemisms for ’sell-out’.
On 01 Jun 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
While the rest of the world stargazed at the bewildering array of devices at Sifma that can make your data shoot from Point A to Point B that little bit faster, we couldn’t help but ponder two very different distractions.
On 01 May 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
It’s always the same. You go away for a couple of weeks, not even on vacation – more of a change of scenery (and what scenery it is down in piquant Perigord) – and the next thing you know bids have been made to acquire two of the companies you hold dearest to your heart.
On 01 Apr 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
It’s all about delivery.
Or at least it seems to be at the moment. Can it be true that content is no longer king?
Of course, we don’t believe that for an instant. But in dealing with a standard, commoditized set of data, ceteris paribus, delivery can become the differentiator that gives the client an advantage over its rival – and the supplier an edge over its competitor.
On 01 Mar 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
Industry commentators have suggested that it might have been better to put back this month’s start date for the Reg NMS market structure changes in the U.S. until global markets ‘settle down’ a bit. That sounds like a bit of a luxury to us. A bit like suggesting waiting to have a baby until the finances are looking a bit healthier. For such things – major regulatory changes, childbirth, and the like – there is no good time. You just have to bite the bullet. Right?
On 01 Feb 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
Anyone who has been in the market data business any length of time knows that it is populated by journalists. Industry outsiders ask why, and the simple answer is that many of the existing quote providers grew out of news agencies, Reuters being the most obvious and pervasive example.
On 01 Jan 2007 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
As exclusively predicted in the pages of our MiFID Monitor sibling publication a couple of months ago, Markit Group has emerged as the business management partner of the Boat consortium to build a pre- and post-trade market data utility in support of the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive.
On 01 Dec 2006 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
If you got the impression that low latency had dominated our thoughts this month, you’d be right. Long-time readers will know we’ve been debating, speculating and salivating over the prospect of low-latency delivery infrastructures hitting prime time.
On 01 Nov 2006 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
O ye of little faith.
Anyone who doubted the impact of the EU’s pending Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) on the structure of our marketplace will surely agree that the past month’s events have made it clear that the major market participants are finally taking the regulators seriously.
On 01 Oct 2006 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
Back to New York and a resumption of normal (i.e., non-SIA Show) service at Brits on the Street. It was great to see such a worthy group show up in our grimy NoHo hangout (highlight for long-time regulars: Isabel behind the bar), just up the street from the sadly almost-defunct CBGB. And so encouraging to see so many quality newcomers. Pete and Andrew are looking forward to the next one (Septics in the City in December, anyone?). But joking aside, Brits on the Street is an excellent networking group and works as a fantastic sounding board for those among us keen on validating their personal theories of what’s going on in our marvelous market data business. Of course, you’ll have to stop by the next even if you want first-hand experience.
On 01 Sep 2006 in MDI-First Word, Market Data Insight
There’s no place quite like home. And so returning to lovely, leafy Greenwich after an extended stint at Le Chateau d’A-Team, we’re especially enamoured of the facilities one normally considers standards. Things like email, phones that work, cellphones with (reasonably reliable) service.
