Some were forced to do it themselves.

In the wake of Knight Capital’s technology glitch – if you missed it, a linchpin in trading markets was nearly undone Aug 1 by faulty trading software – some brokers who normally route order flow to Knight for handling had to execute their own trades.

They’re not as good at it. No question. But a curious thing happened. We observed a measurable increase in share of market for rational money. More volume acted like rational investment the days following.

Why? How? Today, money often puts compliance before investment considerations. Say you’re a mid-tier broker-dealer whose client is a small Midwest municipal pension fund. The fund puts a modest percentage of resources into a trading portfolio and directs trades to you because your firm’s president golfs Fridays with the mayor.

Before we continue, breaking news: I’m in New Orleans next week to sit down with JOE SALUZZI, co-author of Broken Markets, for a candid chat on what ails markets today. I’m also moderating a wild brawl of a panel discussion on the hot topics in IR today. If you’re not in the Big Easy next week, well…you’re not where you should be.

Back to our story. Market rules require that you as a broker execute trades in something similar to the amount of time that Morgan Stanley does, which is hard to do without more risk to your firm’s capital base (meaning your money takes the other side of trades if nobody else is there). Face it. A family brokerage in Bloomington, IL, isn’t going to host its servers right next to the Nasdaq’s in Trumbull, CT, like Morgan Stanley. Continue reading →

Do you hate day traders?

Reading the 30-page Waiver and Consent letter from Peter Beck, who once ran now-defunct day-trading firm Swift Trade, it seems FINRA must.

Maybe you do too. But there’s a lesson in the story here, IR folks.

If you missed it, Beck’s woes got page-one billing from the keyboard of Scott Patterson at the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Beck ran a loose global day-trading federation last decade that at peak hosted some 4,000 traders outside the United States funneling orders through Beck’s execution broker Biremis Securities in Toronto.

The allegations are a compendium on failed oversight. We counted 35 instances of the words “appropriate,” “proper,” “improper” and “improperly” in the document signed by Beck and his legal counsel. It effectively bans Beck from US securities markets (although Beck operated outside the US so the ban seems hollow).

Behind bolded subheadings, the letter says primarily that Beck failed to supervise staff, didn’t keep good records and didn’t comply with standards. What gets attention in the Wall Street Journal is a practice called “layering,” in which traders place a bunch of orders at various price points, say, to buy shares in one place, and then simultaneously enter opposing orders elsewhere, and then cancel most orders as soon as other participants react. The aim is a quick profit at minimal risk. Continue reading →

When investors buy and sell shares, what happens?

The logical answer is “stocks go up and down.” Let’s get more specific. Among the 20 largest asset managers at the end of 2009, ten were bank-owned, says consulting firm Towers Watson. The five largest – Blackrock, State Street, Allianz, Fidelity and Vanguard – are independents that pass the preponderance of their buying and selling through the biggest sellside firms on passive equity and ETF trading programs.

The banks behind ten of the twenty largest asset managers include BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, BNY Mellon, Credit Agricole, UBS, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Bank of America.

The top ten futures brokers for 2009 were Newedge (Societe General/Credit Agricole joint venture), Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, UBS, BofA, MF Global, Morgan Stanley and Barclays. Continue reading →

We’re late this week due to celebrations around the anniversary of the rebellion from the Crown. We played croquet, appropriately and cheekily British we thought (no offense to our good friends and former overlords across the pond). Croquet has actual rules we learned.

Sunday, Karen and I loaded the bikes and set out with good friend Jeffrey to conquer the passage between two of Colorado’s tall “fourteeners” named Princeton and Harvard. We rode from the Arkansas Valley floor at 8,000 feet up Cottonwood Pass (which sounds like “cotton whupass”) from Buena Vista to the summit at 12,126 feet and a stunning view of the fruited plain.

Choosing a route from point A to point B had me thinking about stock trades (you do this long enough, that’ll happen to you too). Stock trades must have routes. Sometimes it happens automatically. Whether orders for shares in your stock meet their matches internally at Barclays or by dint of timing, routing, pricing and chance at Susquehanna’s dark pool, RiverCross, often is a matter of routing. Even online brokers afford ways to route trades now. Continue reading →

Denver is an icebox, so we went east to New York to warm up. Lovely here, the tree glittering at Rockefeller Center and the snowflakes magically materializing to music on the Saks & Co. façade. Festive!

Carmen Barone and the Barclays team graciously hosted me yesterday on the NYSE trading floor, and in the afternoon Marge Wywras at Knight Capital Group turned me loose with the traders on the Knight floor in Jersey City. That’s darned near a perfect business day to me. Continue reading →