TradingScreen has announced the launch of TradePrime® which aims to incorporate all the key workflows an alternative asset manager requires into single platform, delivered via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.
This new functionality includes:
· Real time in memory global position keeping
· Multi inventory models for realized and unrealized P&L
· Multi hierarchical levels for position and P&L
· Multi-prime reporting package
· Risk measurement based on multiple models
· Automatic rebalancing
· Best fit allocation management
· End of Day (EOD) pricing service
· Start of day and EOD prime broker service
· Connection to leading administrators
· Reconciliation service
“The comprehensive OMS functionality in TradeSmart® keeps our customers several steps ahead of the trend of OMS and EMS convergence,” said TradingScreen CEO Philippe Buhannic. “Large alternative asset managers are responding to regulators’ and investors’ demands by introducing increased risk management, reporting and compliance, which needs to be done in a simple and effective manner. TradingScreen has worked extensively during the last three years with buy side partners to develop a series of tools that replicate this new workflow. We are very happy with the reception of this breakthrough concept that surpasses our expectations and testifies to the need for a better approach to these issues.”
Source: www.automatedtrader.net
List of Top 10 Hedge Funds By Assets Under Management
AR has completed its biannual survey of the world’s top hedge funds. Among the big stories is that James Simons’ Renaissance Technologies has clawed its way into the top 10 hedge funds bumping King Street Capital off the list. Bridgewater Associates remains atop the list. Here is a list of the top 10 biggest hedge funds:
Top 10 Biggest Hedge Fund Managers
- Bridgewater Associates
- J.P. Morgan Asset Management / Highbridge Capital Management
- Paulson & Co.
- BlackRock Financial Management, Inc.
- Och-Ziff Capital Management Group
- Soros Fund Management
- Baupost Group
- Angelo, Gordon & Co
- Renaissance Technologies
- Farallon Capital Management
Source: richard-wilson.blogspot.com
NEWSPAPERS AND WIRES
Former Galleon Group hedge fund trader Craig Drimal was sentenced to five and a half years in prison after admitting his part in an insider-trading scheme that stretched from technology firms to pharmaceutical companies, Bloomberg reports. Drimal pleaded guilty in April to six counts of conspiracy and securities fraud, admitting that he and others at Galleon traded on inside information obtained from lawyers working on transactions involving 3Com Corp and Axcan Pharma Inc. Drimal said the tips came from Arthur Cutillo and Brien Santarlas, lawyers at Boston-based Ropes & Gray.
Hedge fund Diamondback Capital Management, which had been embroiled in the government’s insider trading case, has agreed to pay back roughly $1m to settle an insider trading case, according to a court filing released on Wednesday, writes Reuters. The Connecticut-based firm, which has not been accused of any wrongdoing, made the money after a former portfolio manager illegally traded on a tip that Axcan Pharma would be acquired.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said the assets of a Chicago-area money manager and his hedge fund were frozen, a move that stems from allegations they lied to prospective investors in their start-up quantitative hedge fund, reports the Wall Street Journal. The SEC alleges that Belal Faruki, of Illinois, and his advisory firm Neural Markets solicited highly sophisticated individuals to invest in the “Evolution Quantitative 1X Fund,” a hedge fund they managed that supposedly used a proprietary algorithm to carry out an arbitrage strategy involving trading in liquid exchange-traded funds.
Half-year results released by BlueCrest, the $26.8bn hedge fund manager, have revealed year-to-date gains of near 2%. The company, BlueCrest AllBlue Fund Limited, made 1.99%, boosted by the performance of best-performing funds BlueCrest Capital International and BlueMatrix, which returned 2.64% and 3.32% respectively in the first six months. BlueCrest chairman, Richard Crowder, said: “With an uncertain backdrop trading strategies have faced a challenging environment where markets have been driven by political factors, often resulting in severe dislocations.”
David Simon, a well-known New York risk arbitrager, directed his $100m hedge fund firm, Twin Capital Management, to sue his wife and her divorce lawyers, writes Forbes. The claim is that they hacked into Simon’s computer to get their hands on the hedge fund’s highly-secret financial records and trade secrets. In a 15-page complaint filed in Manhattan’s New York state court earlier this week, Simon accuses his wife, Linda Simon, of hacking into a password-protected Twin Capital computer located in the Simons’ home and duplicating the hard-drive.
A top Goldman Sachs strategist has provided the firm’s hedge fund clients with a particularly gloomy economic outlook and suggestions for how these traders can take advantage of the financial crisis in Europe, writes the Wall Street Journal. In a 54-page report sent to hundreds of Goldman’s institutional clients dated 16 August, Alan Brazil – a Goldman strategist who sits on the firm’s trading desk – argued that as much as $1trn in capital may be needed to shore up European banks; that small businesses in the US, a past driver of job production, are still languishing; and that China’s growth may not be sustainable.
Source: www.hfmweek.com
Perhaps nowhere more in the diverse world of hedge fund strategies is the prospect of alpha decay more unsettling than at high-frequency trading firms. In many ways high-frequency trading firms are now facing a reality that other hedge funds with more esoteric strategies may one day face – too much money chasing a finite amount of alpha.
The End of the Hardware Arms Race
The latest figures indicate that high-frequency trading now accounts for somewhere between 60-70% of trading volume in the US. This is up from around 35% just five short years ago. High-frequency trading firms, that in the past have been among the most profitable on Wall Street, are now seeing that increased competition has crowded out many of their traditional strategies. High-frequency trading firms have responded by co-locating their black boxes and by throwing ever more expensive hardware at the problem. This approach has worked for some of the larger, better-funded firms, but only postpones the inevitable.
What will happen when this hardware arms race meets the laws of physics? The answer is that many of these firms will need to develop high-frequency trading strategies where alpha is still relatively abundant and competition less fierce.
New High-Frequency Trading Alpha Opportunities
The two most common opportunities that high-frequency trading are now exploring are as follows:
- Alpha outside the US – The US was the first to develop electronic trading, other regions are still in the process of building out their electronic trading infrastructure. A recent Credit Suisse study estimated that high-frequency trading activity accounts for 35% in Europe and only 10% in Asia (excluding Japan). Many high-frequency trading firms are now seeking to port the strategies that worked so well in the US over to these less developed markets.
- Multi-Dimensional Strategies – The traditional strategies of high-frequency trading have typically been one-dimensional involving the high-frequency trading in and out of a single large, liquid name. The newer high-frequency trading strategies are much more complex and multi-dimensional in nature searching for arbitrage opportunities across asset-classes, geographies etc.
The New Arms Race and Cloud-based Market Data
The common thread that runs through these new strategies is the need for access to more diverse and dispersed market data sets. Market data has always been the lifeblood of high-frequency trading firms. It has also been one of the real pain points of this industry with the requirement to build out large infrastructures to manage and query terabytes of information. This new world of alpha discovery means that high-frequency trading must now potentially analyze vastly greater amounts of data to discover opportunities. Furthermore, the competition to discover these new opportunities will be intense. In this new world alpha will also be more fleeting as firms quickly clone successful strategies. The new high-frequency trading arms race will be all about alpha discovery and time to implementation.
As the high-frequency trading industry’s search for alpha switches from a hardware focus, to a discovery/speed of implementation focus, it is clear that firms with access to large and diverse data sets, that are easy to query and work with, will be at a distinct competitive advantage. The traditional method of downloading vast data sets to a firm’s own data center will not work because of the cost and time delays involved. The only solution that is flexible enough to assist in such rapid discovery and implementation is a Cloud-based approach, where small sub-sets of global multi-asset class market data can be quickly isolated and analyzed. Xignite is the only firm committed to this vision of large, diverse sets of Cloud-based data, all made accessible by our easy-to-use web services, that require no infrastructure, and that can implemented in a matter of minutes.
As this new arms race intensifies and the search for alpha becomes increasingly more desperate we will see more and more high-frequency trading firms abandon their in-house data management infrastructures for the flexibility and breath of data that Xignite’s Cloud-based solution offers.
Deutsche Bank has been rated the No.1 Global Prime Broker for the fourth consecutive year in the Global Custodian Prime Brokerage Survey, the industry benchmark for prime services. This year’s survey received responses from 4,026 hedge fund managers, up a third from last year’s 3,215 responses.
Deutsche Bank has been rated the No.1 Global Prime Broker for the fourth consecutive year in the Global Custodian Prime Brokerage Survey, the industry benchmark for prime services. This year’s survey received responses from 4,026 hedge fund managers, up a third from last year’s 3,215 responses. Deutsche Bank earned the Most Top Rated award for the fourth consecutive year and, in addition, clients ranked the Bank the Best in Class in more categories than any other competitor. Best in Class awards single out prime brokers for excellence in serving hedge funds in each of the 13 service areas and 19 separate client-type categories.
Clients gave top ranking to Deutsche Bank’s Global Prime Finance platform in Financing, OTC Derivatives, Margining, Prime Custodian, Value and Reputation. Clients also acknowledged Deutsche Bank’s global reach ranking it No.1 Best in Class in several regions, including Asia, Europe, Japan, North America and South Africa.
Global Custodian called the Bank’s performance “outstanding across the board.”
Source: http://www.4-traders.com
Concept Capital Markets has launched a new managed accounts platform.
The boutique New York-based prime broker has created a registered investment advisor that will allow its clients to offer their clients managed accounts. Concept’s hedge funds will be able to move all of their money to the new platform or can offer managed accounts to existing or potential investors on an individual basis, HFMWeek reports.
“Growing assets under management in a hedge fund world can be difficult at times and an alternative to starting a hedge fund would be to run money as a single managed-account business,” Concept’s Robert Moore said.
Source: www.finalternatives.com
New white paper discusses practical implications of market fragmentation in a global context
Fidessa group plc (LSE: FDSA), provider of high-performance trading, investment management and information solutions for the world’s financial community, has today announced the publication of the first in a series of white papers exploring the impact of multi-market equities trading in Australia, following changes to its market integrity legislation. The paper, entitled Aussie Rules – The New Trading Landscape for Australian Equities, puts the Australian experience into a global context and investigates how all parties involved can best adjust to meet the challenges ahead.
Fidessa’s paper assesses the practical implications of the regulatory framework established by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). It compares these to similar developments in other key geographies, notably MiFID in Europe, RegNMS in the US and UMIR in Canada, highlighting important differences that will determine the unique characteristics of the Australian marketplace as it evolves.
Steve Grob, Director of Group Strategy at Fidessa, says: “Market fragmentation has become an inevitable global force, driven by a combination of demand, regulation and technological capability. The Australian trading landscape is now going through a period of rapid transformation and re-alignment in much the same way as Europe and North America have experienced. The Australian marketplace will naturally form its own unique identity, but regardless of its eventual form, the changes will have significant consequences for all parties involved in trading Australian equities.”
The paper considers the role to be played by Smart Order Routing (SOR) technology and suggests that success in the new marketplace will depend on firms’ abilities to combine routing across lit and dark liquidity with intelligent, end-to-end workflow. It concludes SOR technology must have the specific features demanded by the Australian marketplace and a proven and demonstrable ability to scale as conditions change.
Grob adds: “Evidence from elsewhere suggests that the widespread adoption of essential SOR technology will increase the pace of change and we expect many players in Australia will re-evaluate where they fit in the trading landscape. The new field of competition for providers of SOR solutions and intelligent workflow has moved to the Southern Hemisphere and it will be fascinating to see how it plays out.”
Subsequent papers in the series will address the specific issues for retail and institutional investors, brokers, high-frequency traders and venues in more detail.
Click here to download the new white paper
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Press release in Adobe PDF format |
Source: www.fidessa.com
UK-based asset manager chooses REVPORT™ to comply with RDR regulation.
REVPORT™ to manage firm’s fund rebates and fee billing.
Bonaire Software Solutions, LLC, a leading provider of revenue management, accounting and business intelligence solutions to investment managers, mutual funds, wealth managers, broker dealers, RIAs and bank/trusts, today announced that one of the top five largest global asset managers has selected REVPORT™ to comply with Retail Distribution Review (RDR) regulation.
The asset manager chose Bonaire after carrying out a thorough selection process to find a solution to address new UK regulatory requirements, such as RDR. The firm will be using REVPORT™ to manage its EMEA fund rebates, retrocessions, commissions and fee calculations. REVPORT™ will deliver tangible business benefits, including:
· Lower operating costs and improved efficiency through the replacement of manually intensive spreadsheet-based processes
· Control and calculation of fund or distributor rebates
· Calculation of retrocessions, trailers, sub-advisor pay-outs and fee splits
· Centralize fee-based revenue and accounting data within a single, robust repository
“To be signing such a prestigious global client is a testament to the Bonaire value proposition and the benefits our products can bring to the global investment management industry. With RDR imposing stringent fee transparency standards on investment management businesses, firms need to be accurately billing fees,” comments Chris John, CEO of Bonaire. “Asset managers are highly susceptible to errors in their fund rebates and fund expense management. Our REVPORT™ software will ensure that these managers can efficiently and accurately calculate these fees, and perhaps more importantly, comply with new regulations.”
Source: www.bobsguide.com
Second-quarter earnings at Deutsche Bank were slightly lower than previously anticipated, despite the lender reporting an increase on gains at its consumer banking business.
The day after the institute – which has more than 100,000 employees in 73 countries – unveiled two co-chief executive officers (CEOs) to succeed Josef Ackermann, it revealed a net income rise of 3.3 per cent to €1.2 billion euros ($1.74 billion).
However, this amount fell just short of the €1.3 billon climb anticipated by 12 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
The bank, while announcing investment banking chief Anshu Jain and management board member Juergen Fitschen will become co-CEOs in 2012, set itself a goal of €10 billion in operating pre-tax profit for the year.
Olaf Kayser, analyst at Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, told Bloomberg: “Lifting the uncertainty over the CEO succession issue is positive for the shares and the good results at the private clients and asset management unit help as well.”
Source: www.bobsguide.com
SunGard’s APT has been voted best risk management software at the Hedgeweek USA Awards 2011. The Hedgeweek Awards for excellence among hedge fund managers and service providers honored the U.S. industry’s best performers and their ability to demonstrate consistency and depth of expertise against a backdrop of a more complex, but also potentially more rewarding, investment climate.
SunGard’s APT was recognized as “Best Risk Management Software” for its robust factor-based risk methodology and its excellent client service. The award was decided by the votes of Hedgeweek’s nearly 20,000 U.S.-based subscribers, who include institutional and high net worth investors as well as managers and other industry professionals at firms including fund administrators, prime brokers, custodians and advisers.
Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Financial Services, a customer of SunGard’s APT, said, “SunGard’s APT has a great factor model approach, which captures ‘fat tails’ and is very flexible around investment decision making. APT helps us make better informed investment decisions and build better portfolios.”
Rob Mackay, chief operating officer of SunGard’s APT business unit, said, “This award is a testament to our strong U.S. customer base, to whom we owe this win. Customers of SunGard’s APT value the flexibility of APT’s portfolio construction, optimization and risk reporting capabilities and we would like to thank them for this compelling endorsement.”
About SunGard’s APT
SunGard’s APT provides investment technology for a broad range of asset classes, countries and regions including data and software for understanding market risk, credit risk, liquidity risk and for portfolio construction and performance analysis. APT provides investors with statistical market risk models, performance and risk analytics and portfolio optimization and construction tools. APT’s customers include institutional and retail asset managers, pension funds, private wealth managers, hedge funds, broker/dealers, prime brokers and proprietary traders.
About SunGard
SunGard is one of the world’s leading software and technology services companies. SunGard has more than 20,000 employees and serves more than 25,000 customers in 70 countries. SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software. With annual revenue of about $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 434 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company.
Source: www.prnewswire.com
