Institutional Investor (April 13)
“The sell side doesn’t quite get it yet,” but a major shift will soon transform their very existence. With Phase two of the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) scheduled to take effect in January, broker-dealers must “explicitly price a dark art whose cost was previously wrapped into trading commissions (on equity products) or spread (on fixed income). And that, in turn, could put a lot of analysts out of work in Europe, the U.K….and, in time, the U.S. and everywhere else.” Current predictions are that by 2020 global research volume will decrease by around 25% to 60%… or even more.
Tags: Analysts, Broker dealers, EU, MiFID, Research, Sell-side, Spread, Trading commissions, U.S., UK, Volume
Financial Times (August 23)
High-frequency traders are being scrutinized by the Financial Industry Regulatory Association (FINRA). Broker-dealers that provided clients with direct market access may be fined if they did not implement required risk-management controls. The Financial Times thinks this is a good thing. During the May 6 “flash crash” U.S. stocks dropped almost 1,000 points, yet “officials still do not fully understand what happened.” Regulators need to “catch up.” Technical fixes and new rules can help “ensure markets serve the non-professional users who access them.”
Tags: Broker dealers, FINRA, Flash crash
