Tervela Message Medium Blog | financial information forum

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the quarterly Financial Information Forum (FIF) event entitled “Doing More with Less” at Thomson Reuters in Times Square in New York.  The session opened (in typical FIF fashion) with market data statistics, which were presented by Chris Perry of Thomson Reuters and Manisha Kimmel of FIF.  Recession aside, we we’re still seeing impressive market data growth.  (Can someone please tell the market we’re in a damn recession and stop producing so much data?  Kidding, our course.  We at Tervela thrive on this.)

The follow-on panel was moderated by the esteemed Tom Jordan, President & CEO, of Jordan & Jordan.  Practitioners in the hot seats, whom I compliment on their honesty, included:

• Brett Redfearn, Global Head of Liquidity & Algorithmic Trading, J.P. Morgan
• Madalena Sheehan, Executive Director, Global Wealth Management, Morgan Stanley
• Dan Weingarten, Senior Vice President and Co-Director of Global Sales and Marketing, Penson Worldwide

My takeaway was about efficiency: in how we operate, in how we process data, in how we work with our partners, in how we continue to make our customers happy. Though certainly an important tactic, I’d much rather be an organization that’s already up the efficiency curve.   As AIG and GM are proving, it’s not a great time to retool.  But we also heard how volatility and increasing volumes are having an adverse effect on trading systems.  The panelists described the unerasable link between business and technology.  They discussed their concerns about the risk of technical outages.  Think about the link:  technical outage = business outage. Obvious?  Of course, but just make sure your movement to efficiency doesn’t leave you vulnerable.

=rob.ciampa

Tags: financial information forum (2) fif (1) jordan & jordan (1) market data (4) efficiency (1) 

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The latest issue of Wall Street & Technology (January/February 2009 Issue) came late.  I thought I was dumped because I was honest on the subscription and didn’t say I was buying $3.2 billion of Complex Event Processors.  Regardless, the current issue features a special report on “The Modern IT Organization.”  The lead article and the supporting pieces are a very good read.  There is a good deal of ink on cloud computing, but my comments on that are for another day.  In the meantime, the intro quote was telling:

For the first time in recent memory, senior technology leaders’ No. 1 mandate is not to build technology to prepare for business growth.  Instead the top IT priority across Wall Street is to manage technology efficiently.

But…  having just read the 2008 Financial Information Forum year-in-review that showed the market data for EVERY asset class increasing, I have to wonder whether we’re setting ourselves up for a market data crisis.  Not sure the cloud computing junkies are going to give us a sunny day on that one.

=rob.ciampa

Tags: wall street & technology (3) it (1) cloud computing (1) market data (4) financial information forum (2) 

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