FIA EPTA Blog
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CMU and the Investment Firm Review: strengthening European capital markets through proportionality
Hands up if you want up-and-coming European companies to have sufficient access to the money they need to grow and to drive prosperity across the EU? It’s a no brainer – and one of the reasons why European politicians and regulators are keen to push forward the Capital Markets Union.
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Developing the CMU through an effective new Prudential Regime for Investment Firms
One of the building blocks of the EU’s Capital Markets Union project is entering a crucial few months as the proposed new Prudential Regime for Investment Firms enters parliamentary scrutiny.
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Flash Crashes – time to stop knee-jerk blaming of HFT?
On the 6th May 2010, Wall Street experienced what quickly became known as the ‘Flash Crash’. On the 15th January 2015, the Swiss Franc experienced a similar event against the Euro. And in October 2016, there was a flash crash in sterling, following Britain’s vote to leave the EU. The recent events in the sterling market seemed like a good idea to look back at the post event analysis of previous ‘flash crashes’ and review the findings.
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The growing body of HFT research: time to put old arguments to bed?
Over the last few years the great and the good of the world’s regulatory authorities that govern financial markets have studied the impacts of the electronification of the markets, and the role played by high frequency trading. We welcome the recognition in these studies that markets and end users benefit from increased use of innovative technology, in line with the experience with innovation in other industries. We provide a summary of the recent reports.
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Five years’ of providing a voice to the EU principal trading industry
This summer, FIA EPTA marked the 5th anniversary of its foundation. Although still a comparatively young organisation, this milestone has caused the people, like myself, who were there at the start to reflect upon how things have changed since we’ve been in business – as well as looking forward to what the next five years might bring.
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CRD IV bonus cap has perverse effect of increasing risk
The EU's Capital Requirements Directive CRD IV has imposed a bonus cap on credit institutions and investment firms with the intention of discouraging the excessive risk-taking with client monies that contributed to the financial crisis. However, the inappropriate application of this bonus cap to principal trading firms now has the potential to result in the perverse effect of actually increasing risk, whilst hurting market quality.
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Liquidity and Quote Fading
One observation I see made regularly by commentators on electronic markets is that liquidity can 'disappear in an instant' and is somehow ephemeral. Quotes, they say, tend to fade as soon as the market notices there's a seller around. I'm always rather bemused by this observation, because it implies that in more manual markets, liquidity is (or was) more stable.
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Non-discriminatory access to MiFID II derivatives trading venues: Critical for market transparency and competition
With the requirement for MTFs and OTFs to have objective participation criteria, MiFID II aims to dismantle existing barriers and increase competition and pre-trade transparency for all market participants. It is worth remembering, however, that despite similar objective participation criteria requirements in the US, additional guidance from regulators was required in order to address certain discriminatory practices.
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Financial Markets 2.0
FIA EPTA's Acting Chairman, Mark Spanbroek, presents a John Lothian MarketsWiki Education series on 'Financial Markets 2.0'.
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The myth of order cancellations: a new study
It is sometimes said that high frequency traders aren’t really providing liquidity to the market because they cancel orders more frequently than other market participants. A new research paper shows that this really isn’t true.
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