Mashups for the Masses

About a day ago, I started playing with a beta online service #IFTTT, which rhymes with "lift" and is an abbreviation for "If This, Then That."

Its name sums it up nicely. It takes events from approximately 30 popular social media services - Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress and etc. - and lets users create actions based on those events.

Happy Holidays

I've started my Christmas vacation, so I'm not sure how often I will be in front of the computer over the next few weeks. I wish you and yours a happy set holidays and that you'll enjoy this ode to Calvin and Hobbes' cartoonist Bill Watterson.

Defining the Indefinable

Earlier this week CFTC Commissioner Scott O'Malia chaired a meeting of the regulator's Technology Advisory Committee. As part of the discussion, a number of market participants, regulators and researchers presented their opinions on how the regulator might define high frequency trading. I toss in my two cents with this week's Friday Musings. You can view the entire session online here - just forward the video to the 215:00 mark.

Descendants Strikes Out

As a movie, The Descendants has wonderful cinematography and that is about it. As long as you ignore the plot or character development you may leave the theater with a warm fuzzy feeling.

The story revolves around the descendants of Hawaii's first families and how they deal with serious family issues. The movie gives the viewer the sense that the social and economic elite are just like everyone else, save not having to worry about day-to-day necessities.

Will Cloud Computing Survive the Regulators?

It came as no surprise that of the two recurring themes of this week's Waters USA conference in Manhattan were cloud computing and the impact of new global regulatory environment on banks' global IT infrastructure.

This week's Friday Musing looks at the intersection of these trends: Can financial firms deploy new global cloud-based infrastructures in light of the recent data and application retention policies set forth by various national regulators?

Scorses Does It Again

I walked into Martin Scorses' Hugo without reading any reviews or knowing anything about the Brian Selznick book on which it is based and I'm glad. I found it a wonderful movie for all ages. I doubt that youngsters will appreciate the appearance of James Joyce having coffee with Salvador Dali in one of the early crowd scenes, but this movie is filled with many such things.

Twitter Maps Made Easy

View rob_daly's profile on TweepsMap

I have to admit that I'm an analytics junkie. When I came across #TweepsMap for Twitter, it sucked me in for a bit more time than is probably healthy. It's easy to use and provides a good deal of data. Check it out and have fun.

Are You Really Ready for Real-Time Pre-Trade Risk Checks?

In a little over a week, all SEC-regulated brokers in the US will need to preform pre-trade risk and capital checks for clients for whom they provide sponsored market access. Sell-Side Technology sits down with industry veteran Bill Karsh to discuss how prepared the industry is as well as the state of the available custom and third-party offerings.

The Lighter Side of Lower Manhattan

To soothe tempers around Zucotti Park, New York's MTA has integrated the world's largest gumdrop into its new Fulton Street Transit Center.

"We hope that it will bring out everyone's holiday cheer and calm everything down," says an MTA spokesperson, not wishing to be identified.

Dodd-Frank's Brave New World

I recently had a chance to catch up with Tabb Group's Kevin McPartland in his firm's office overlooking lower Manhattan. We took the opportunity to discuss how prepared the swaps industry is for life under Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act now that US regulators expect to have the rules complete in the next five months. You can listen to the entire conversation at Sell-Side Technology.

The Mill and the Cross

The best way to describe Lech Majewski's The Mill and the Cross is that it is falling into a painting for 90 minutes. The film is an in-depth analysis of Flemish painter Pieter Brugel the Elder's 1564 painting "Way to Calvary."

Low Latency in the Middle and Back Office

How can sell-side firms leverage their low-latency trading technology to handle the new levels of regulatory and client reporting? 

I've scribbled a few thoughts on the topic at Sell-Side Technology.

The Nature of the OTC Beast

The US Commodities Futures Trading Committee (CFTC) expects to have its final rules for swaps execution facilities completed in approximately five months and have have swap dealers operating in the new environment 90 days after that.

The more I follow the heavy lifting that remains in this rule-making process, the more obvious it is that the rules will take much longer than the remaining five months to hammer out. 

Even when the new rules in place, I doubt the markets will operate anywhere close to how the regulators intended.

MiFID II First Takes

Yesterday the European Commission published its proposed version of the second draft of Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) and its associated Markets in Financial Instruments and Amending Regulation (MiFIR). Between these two documents there are approximately 250 pages of the best regulatory reading since The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. I haven't had a chance to go through the documents in their entirety yet, but I've jotted down a few thoughts in this week's Friday Musings.

 

Hidden New York

I've been trying to drown out the sounds of #OccupyWallStreet and rest of the sounds of my morning commute for the past few weeks listening to a number of The Bowery Boys podcasts. The hosts, Greg and Tom, give fantastic 30- to 60-minute discussions on the people, places and things that went in making New York City the vibrant city that it is today.

My two most recent favorite podcasts are the ones they have done the Police Riots of 1857 and The Great Fire of 1835. Maybe it's the absurdity of one and the proof that the city can come back from almost anything that makes me like them so much.

If you have the time to download a few episodes from iTunes, you won't be disappointed. They've done so many that you'll be sure find something that interests you. My favorite thing to do is simply download a bunch of them and just listen to them back-to-back on long drives.

Does Half A Standard Work?

Today's Friday Musing looks at whether the US Securities and Exchange Commission's Rule 15c3-5 on pre-trade risk check goes far enough to protect US markets from high-frequency trading and fat-finger mistakes.

Warning Lights for Market Circuit Breakers

In this week's Friday Musings, I've taken a quick look at Center for Innovative Financial Technology's (CIFT's) recent white paper entitled "Federal Market Information Technology in the the Post Flash Crash Era: Roles for Supercomputing."

Although the paper's authors discuss how they went about calculating these new market indicators, I'm far more interested on how firms may be able to implement them on their own so that they can avoid trading exposure when a circuit breaker trips.

Automating Dodd-Frank

After a few weeks of hiatus, I'm pleased that we've posted another Financial Tech Talk audio interview on the  Sell-Side Technology website.

In this first part of two-part interview with industry veteran Ciaran Henry, we sit down and discuss how firms are coping with Dodd Frank's real-time and intra-day reporting requirements for OTC trading.

Please check back for when we post the second part of the interview, in which we look at how firms can leverage their existing low-latency trading infrastructure for this new electronically traded market.

UPDATE: We've posted the second portion of the audiocast here.

Is FTL Messaging Getting Closer?

Although the experiment's results still need to be replicated, CERN researchers believe that some of the neutrinos that they fired along a 730 km-long testbed arrived traveling faster than the speed of light. If other particle physicists are able to replicate the feat, this could revolutionize messaging.

I've written a few thoughts about the subject in my weekly editor's letter for Sell-Side Technology.

I've also been on a quantum mechanics kick for a few months now that has lead me to write a piece in the October issue of Waters magazine on the the current state of quantum computing and how it could be used on Wall Street ($$).

This nascent technology is far from being a computing panacea, but it's capable of changing the rules of the game and further separating the technology haves and have-nots.

The Debt

Saying good-bye to summer this afternoon, I caught a matinee of The Debt. This good spy thriller owes a lot to John Ford's classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Instead of following the life and career of an idealistic lawyer in the American Old West, it follows the lives of three Mossad agents who participate in a Cold War era capture an extract mission to bring a Nazi surgeon to justice. This film, however, takes a much grittier and realistic view of when history and mythology collide. It is definitely worth the price of admission.

After Irene

An interesting little tour of Hoboken, NJ the day Hurricane Irene left.

Hoboken Update II

Hoboken 411 posted a few daylight photos of Hoboken as well as some from HobokenPatch. I'm hearing that the east side of Hoboken is doing relatively well, but some points on the west side of the city has up to 5 feet of water.

Update: Here are a few more photos from HobokenPatch.

Hoboken Update I

There's not much to do remotely but scan the Web for updates and useful links.

I've already started collecting useful Twitter feeds for updates on the conditions in Hoboken (@rob_daly/hoboken-news).

So far it sounds like massive flooding, which has lead the city to evacuate the local Wallace School shelter and transport people to the Izod Center in East Rutherford, NJ late last night.

Everything else seems to be understandably anecdotal when it comes to power outages and flood levels. As of approximately 6 am power utility PSG&E estimates that 213,000 customers are without power in the company's territory.

Just a few minutes ago, the city reported local flooding sites. They appear to be the usual suspects.

Okay, Irene

I spent this morning packing the car, picking up my sibling and heading to the family homestead. It looks to be a good call since the mayor of Hoboken has officially ordered a mandatory evacuation of all first floor units in the city. Now, it's waiting and watching the Weather Channel and one of the local webcams.

For everyone who decided to stay put and ride it out, good luck and God bless.

Irene, Really?

I’m really torn on the entire Hurricane Irene coverage that I’ve been seeing on television and online. Ever since Los Angeles traffic officials hyped the July weekend closing of the 405 Freeway as “Carmegedon” in order to keep people off the highway, I’m having a hard time digesting all of the hurricane hype surrounding Irene and the tri-state area.

I can see it from a municipality's view: They simply do not have the budget to deal with hurricane damages as they previously did and fear is a wonder motivator to get your citizens to do what you want them to do. But once you know that governments cry “wolf” one too many times, it is hard to totally trust them.

No, I don’t want to become another accident statistic. I’m probably packing a bag tonight in case I have to spend some time away from home because of the weather. Yet, I remember other Category 1 storms hitting the region in years past and you saw people in the Hoboken bars and restaurants.

Just my $0.02.

If I am horribly horribly wrong, please make sure that my nephew gets my comic book collection.

Reducing Latency via UX Design

Earlier this month, we launched a new series of audiocasts over at Sell-Side Technology, dubbed Financial Tech Talk. It's been a fun learning how to produce and host these online conversations with industry insiders about the IT issues facing the investment banking community.

This week, we posted a 30-minute conversation with visual data interface designer Brad Paley on how to firms can convey far more visual data and reduce "human latency" by implement elements of psycholinguistics in their user experience (UX) design. We will be posting additional audiocasts as the weeks go by, so please check back.

"Not in front of the American"

I spent a rainy Sunday afternoon catching a viewing of The Guard. I have only seen Brendan Gleeson in supporting roles up until now like Ken the experienced hit man in the 2008 In Bruges and Mad-Eye Moody in the various Harry Potter movies. It is good to know that he can carry a leading role. In the film he plays a very independently thinking Connemara police sergeant who winds up in a middle of a multinational drug deal occurring his quiet community in the west of Ireland. Don Cheadle plays an FBI officer sent to help capture the drug dealers and is a great "fish out of water" straight man for Gleeson's Irish wit. If you are looking for a film reflecting a cosmopolitan 21st Century Ireland, this is not for you. But if you are into clever non-PC banter delivered fluidly, check out the movie.

Pillage N the Village Bed Race Regatta

Palmyra, NY hosted its fourth annual Pillage N the Village Bed Race Regatta this weekend. For those are not familiar with bed races, it involves a 5-person team, who ideally should be four bob-sledders in training and a jockey.  Teams modify bedframes by adding wheels and push bars as well as decorating it accordingly (presentation always counts). The race is pretty simple: The jockeys ride their respective beds while their teammates push the beds at breakneck speed to the mid-point of the race route where they have to stop. The jockeys jump off their beds, run to a bucket, put on a pair of pajamas and race back to their beds. Then the team races to the finish line.

Jackassery Costs Dear

The key paragraph from S&P's downgrade note:

The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year's wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently. Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements,the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.

Death of the 5-Year IT Plan?

Is the pace of technological innovation preventing companies from making long-term IT investment plans? Yes, it's basically Alvin  Toffler's FutureShock thesis applied to IT planning and my column for the August issue of Waters.

Dodd-Frank: Two Perspectives

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Hacking the Genome

Okay, this year's summer reading definitely has taken a bit of a tech turn. I'm halfway through Marcus Wohlsen's Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life. The 209-page book looks at what happens when amateur bio-engineers band together and embrace to open-source movement.  I'll be writing more once it when I finish it, but so far it's very interesting.

Clouds, Community Clouds or Managed Services?

Our July issue of Waters magazine has been up on our website for a few days now. This month, I looked at the new "community clouds" that are popping up in the financial services space. Major vendors such as NYSE Technologies and Reuters are layering a number of business applications and data set on top of their offering there by moving the user closer to the data rather than moving the data closer to the user. Is it true cloud computing? I'm not sure. Marketers have done a wonderful job muddying the definition.

Summer Reading

I just finished Annie Jacobsen's history of the Groom Lake, NV facility known as Area 51 on today's commute into the office. Except for the last chapter, which is definitely a shout-out to the ufologist community, Jacobsen presents a well-researched and documented twin history of post-World War II nuclear testing and  airborne reconnaissance programs.

The New Face of Global Exchanges?

Is there room for more global exchange operators?

If you take the recent TMX Group and LSE Group, the respective operators of the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and the venerable London Stock Exchange (LSE), the answer appears to be "no."

I wrote this short opinion piece for my day job on the topic.

Kiwi Jetpack Soars

A New Zealand inventor's jetpack reaches 5,000 ft and safely returns to the ground. But unlike the rocket belt from Goldfinger, this one won't fit in the trunk of your Aston Martin.

Friday Musings

Just a few day-job thoughts on how cloud computing can become a game changer when it comes to computing security.

The Futures

I've been on a financial services reading kick lately and I've just finished reading Emily Lambert's  The Futures: The Rise of the Speculator and the Origins of the World's Biggest Markets. It's a quick and enjoyable read that gives a good history of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Chicago's financial history. Starting with commodities and futures trading in the 19th Century, Lambert goes into the personalities, the politics and market structure that have created one of the largest financial markets. Her style reminds me a bit of Michael Lewis. If I have one complaint, it's that she does a good job covering  the history up to the late 1970s but once the crash of 1987 occurs, she gallops through the next two decades extremely fast. Aside from that, this is a good book for anyone looking to get a grounding in the futures industry.

Green Hornet Deserves Some Buzz

I have to admit when I went to into the theatre and while watching the coming attractions, I was preparing myself for a for a bad comic-book moving. I'd avoided reading the reviews, but it's hard to keep from hearing the negative buzz about the movie.


I'm happy to say that Seth Rogen did a good job updating the Green Hornet franchise for the 21st Century. Much of the two-hour running time is spent hammering out the inter-dynamics between Britt, Kato and Lenore, Britt's secretary. Rogen really needed to address this in the screen play since the dated dynamic of intelligent publisher and dependent man servant and secretary established from the 30s radio series doesn't hold up, especially when the publisher is played as a boob that brings little to the table.


However, Rogen manages to include a few hat tips to old 60s television series with Van Williams.


Overall it's a fun flick with a surprisingly high body count for a superhero movie.