The COVID crisis turned the trading world on its head. Amid unprecedented volume and volatility, the financial industry also undertook a revolutionary move to adapt to COVID by moving nearly the entire workforce to work from home. One area that...

There still seems to be a misconception that markets primarily driven by central limit orders books (CLOBs) are the most liquid, and that all other markets should strive to move in that direction.   Despite numerous attempts to move the...

Overall job satisfaction in the United States is now over 50%. One study even puts the percentage of American’s satisfied with their job at an amazing 92%.  If you trust either measure, that means the vast majority of working people in the...

Investors continue to thirst for market structure information.  In our most recent U.S. equities study, almost half of buy-side respondents told us that sell-side provision of market-structure-related services was either important or very...

Over the last decade we've seen the talent pool for trading and space exploration become increasingly overlapped.  Science-based PhDs can now either send a man to Mars or help make markets in US Government Bonds.  But that's not actually...

An important, but little understood feature of US market structure is the operation of National Market System (NMS) Plans. NMS Plans came about through the 1975 Amendments to the Securities and Exchange Act, and essentially provide a mechanism for...

There has been plenty of talk amongst the industry about the MiFID II rules aimed at bringing more transparency to dark pool trading venues across Europe.  Regulators claim the lack of transparency and details around transactions is dangerous...

Excel is the biggest killer app of all time.  Yeah, web browsers are pretty useful and Instagram was sold for $1 billion, but when it comes to managing numbers nothing can touch Excel.  This is why global financial markets continue to...