Waters Wavelength

Martin Boyd, global head of FIS’s institutional and wholesale business unit, which represents the legacy SunGard suite of services, joins to discuss everything from fintechs to regulation to machine learning to cloud. Before that, though, Anthony and James provide their takeaway after writing extensively about the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT).   CAT 2:15-18:00 Anthony and James look at the train wreck that is the Consolidated Audit Trail.  https://www.waterstechnology.com/regulation/4152906/cats-tale-how-thesys-the-sros-and-the-sec-mishandled-the-consolidated-audit-trail https://www.waterstechnology.com/regulation/4166596/cats-future-still-cloudy-as-nms-committee-declines-to-name-new-processor Martin Boyd 21:00 Martin Boyd joins the podcast and first looks at the state of the fintech community. 25:30 How does FIS try to interact with that fintech community? 29:30 Where are there still opportunities for fintechs to make an impact? 32:00 A look at how artificial intelligence comes into play.  34:30 How doe

Bryan Cross, head of UBS Asset Management’s Quantitative Evidence and Data Science team (QED), joins the podcast to talk about why the firm created the unit in 2018 and examines the alternative data space. 3:00 What led UBS Asset Management to create the QED group? 6:00 Active versus Passive, and how alternative data fits in. 9:00 It’s still early days in the alternative data industry. 13:30 Which sectors of alternative data are most useful? 18:30 How does AI help to distill this information? 21:00 Talent and culture…what are the lessons learned when building this group? 27:30 Bryan talks about his career path and gives advice to up-and-coming data scientists. 31:00 Some book recommendations.

Lars Ottersgård, head of market technology for Nasdaq, joins to discuss what he sees as being the biggest tech trends in the capital markets for 2019 and beyond. 1:15 Lars takes a quick look back at highlights from 2018. 2:30 He then breaks down what he thinks some of the key tech trends will be for 2019 and beyond. (Cloud will continue to be big.) 6:00 He also thinks that 2019 will be the year for real blockchain use-cases. 9:00 A look at Nasdaq’s recent acquisitions and the company’s tech roadmap. 11:30 Will we see greater consolidation in the alternative data space going forward? 13:00 Lars explains why they are already looking at quantum computing advancements. 15:30 When it comes to AI, what are the most exciting trends that could yield new advancements in 2019? 18:00 Lars tells us his favorite things to do in Stockholm.

First (1:00), the final phases of initial margin rules are expected to capture over the next two years more than 1,000 buy-side and sell-side firms, which technology providers see as potential customers—what are the tech challenges? Then (12:00), James discusses his profile of Robert and Richard Michaud of New Frontier Advisors and why it’s important for technologists to understand investment theory. Finally (22:00), Anthony and James ramble on about comedy and the 1st Amendment. https://www.waterstechnology.com/technology/4103001/tech-releases-surge-ahead-of-initial-margin-deadlines https://www.waterstechnology.com/management-strategy/4089301/rebel-math-robert-and-richard-michaud-new-frontier-advisors

Adam Sussman, head of market structure and liquidity partnerships for Liquidnet, joins the podcast to talk about the Members Exchange (MEMX), which is a proposed new venue for trading US stocks that is backed by a consortium of financial firms: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, E*Trade, Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley, UBS, TD Ameritrade, and Virtu Financial. https://www.waterstechnology.com/management-strategy/4082911/challenging-us-exchanges-will-be-uphill-battle-for-memx-experts-warn https://www.liquidnet.com/expert-insights/is-it-live-or-is-it-memx 2:00 Does the US need another equities venue? 5:00 Might this be a play by these firms to get the established trading venues to lower their fees? 10:00 There aren’t any human names attached to this project yet, should that raise red flags? 13:00 From a tech standpoint, are there any barriers for entry into the exchange marketplace? 18:00 Moving forward, if this exchange gets off the ground, how will it add liquidity?

This week Bill Murphy, chief technology officer of Blackstone Group, joins to discuss his firm’s migration to the public cloud and what he views as being best practices for going to the cloud. This is Bill's fourth time on the show. Here are the links to his previous conversations. https://www.waterstechnology.com/industry-issues-initiatives/3473326/waters-wavelength-podcast-episode-105-blackstones-bill-murphy-part-3 https://www.waterstechnology.com/trading-tools/3056376/waters-wavelength-podcast-episode-60-bill-murphy-blackstone-cto https://www.waterstechnology.com/trading-tools/2461751/waters-wavelength-podcast-episode-22-blackstone-cto-bill-murphy 1:45 Where is Blackstone in its cloud migration journey? 4:30 Where is the industry as a whole when it comes to cloud adoption? 6:30 How can you “do the cloud wrong”? 8:00 As these platforms become more mission critical for everyone, how concerned are you about outages? 12:00 Beyond price, what other factors come into play when choosing between Amazon, Google

Anthony and James discuss the trends that they think will dominate the headlines in 2019: https://www.waterstechnology.com/data-management/4045791/the-best-longform-stories-of-2019 Artificial Intelligence (2:00) Blockchain (3:00) Back to AI (4:00) Cloud (6:00) Regulation (9:00) Alternative Data (14:00) Quantum Computing (16:45) M&A (17:30) Market Data Fees (22:00) WatersTechnology (24:00) The Best Longform Outside of WatersTechnology (28:00) Trashed: Inside the Deadly World of Private Garbage Collection, Kiera Feldman (ProPublica) https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-deadly-world-of-private-garbage-collection Blood Will Tell, Pamela Colloff (ProPublica) https://features.propublica.org/blood-spatter/mickey-bryan-murder-blood-spatter-forensic-evidence/ “I Killed Them All”, Jessica Garrison (Buzzfeed) https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jessicagarrison/martinez-hitman-cartel-black-hand-mano-negra-contract-killer Inside Palmer Luckey’s Bid to Build a Border Wall, Steven Levy (Wired) ht

With James away in London, Wei-Shen Wong, Asia editor for WatersTechnology, calls in from Hong Kong to give her perspective on trends unfolding in the Asia-Pacific region. They talk about blockchain (3:15), cryptocurrencies and—separately—tokenization (14:15), various forms of artificial intelligence and automation efforts (20:00), the proliferation of cloud usage in the region (25:30), and the feud that unfolded between India and Singapore earlier this year and what’s ahead for the two nations (28:00). They wrap things up by admitting to their favorite Netflix shows that bring them shame (35:30) and Wei-Shen talks about some of the stories she’s working on for 2019 (48:30). https://www.waterstechnology.com/operations/4014326/tokenization-the-flip-side-of-the-coin https://www.waterstechnology.com/exchanges-trading-venues/3969216/custody-seen-as-cryptos-next-major-battleground https://www.waterstechnology.com/data-management/4007716/deep-learning-the-evolution-is-here https://www.waterstechnology.com/excha

This week, Anthony and James talk about some of the themes and discussions at our flagship Waters USA conference, which was held in New York City on December 3. Then, James sits down with Raymond Zenkich, president and chief operating officer of crypto insurer BlockRe, to talk about some of the challenges of offering insurance products in such a new and risky market. 2:00 James and Anthony revisit some of the themes from this week’s conference, including where fintech companies get it wrong while trying to attract bank funding. 4:00 One of the highlights was Cathy Bessant, global chief operations and technology officer at Bank of America, being interviewed on-stage by editor-in-chief Victor Anderson. 7:00 A new way of looking at artificial intelligence, beyond the hype cycle, was evident at the conference. [For a very deep dive into how firms are using deep learning in the capital markets, click here.] 9:30 While people are coming around to using one (or more) of the big cloud providers, there are still

After a brief break, Anthony and James are back. This week they look ahead to Waters USA, the December issue of Waters, and Brexit. 1:00 Waters USA will be held on Monday, Dec. 3, at the Convene on W 46th Street in Manhattan. Anthony first looks at some of the highlights—cloud, artificial intelligence, alternative data, regulation, blockchain—for the all-day conference. If you are an end-user, this event is free to attend; vendors will have to pay a fee, but there will be tons of senior executives from end-user firms both in attendance and speaking. Click here to register: http://events.waterstechnology.com/watersusa/book-now Click here to see the agenda: http://events.waterstechnology.com/watersusa/agenda 8:30 James and Anthony give their thoughts on what they hope to hear from speakers at the event and why this is an important tech conference for even non-techies to attend. 17:00 James gives a look at the December issue of Waters magazine. 23:00 Finally, James gives his thoughts on recent developmen

This week, Anthony and James look at three news stories. First, a group of central securities depositories are exploring how their roles are translatable to crypto-asset infrastructure. Next, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. is moving to the next phase in its project to “re-platform” its credit derivatives processing utility using blockchain technology. And finally, IHS Markit officially unveils TradeServ to the world. And outside of the news, they look at how both banks and bank robbers are using artificial intelligence to defend and attack.

This week, Anthony and James first take a look at the fight brewing between the exchanges and the trading firms over market data fees, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) serving as the referee (2:00). Then they caution listeners about believing everything you read when it comes to crypto journalism (11:00). They wrap things up by talking about their favorite underrated movies of all-time (22:00). https://www.waterstechnology.com/exchanges-trading-venues/exchange-data/3949191/the-exchange-data-fee-debate-trick-or-treat https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/01/sec-cryptocurrency-910135 https://www.waterstechnology.com/awards-rankings/3954271/buy-side-technology-awards-2018-all-the-winners

Rick Lane, CEO of Trading Technologies, joins the podcast to discuss the challenges of completely shifting from a monolith, hard-install platform to a software-as-a-solution (SaaS) delivery basis. He also talks about Chicago’s burgeoning institutional crypto scene. But before that, Anthony and James hit on stories coming out of Sibos, as well as the alternative data space. In the News 1:45 A quick look at this year’s Sibos event, which was held in Sydney. You can find our Sibos coverage here: https://www.waterstechnology.com/topics/sibos 4:30 A quick look at the alternative data marketplace after WatersTechnology published a 6,000-word examination of the space. This article will be free to read until Oct. 30: https://www.waterstechnology.com/market-data-data-analytics/3938811/the-new-oil-rush-an-examination-of-the-alternative-data-market   Rick Lane 8:00 Rick Lane joins the podcast.  9:30 First he explains the thinking behind the move from X_Trader to the TT platform, which is delivered via a software-as-

This week, Scott Mullins, worldwide financial services business development lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS), joins the podcast to discuss how capital markets firms are embracing public clouds, how they will look to differentiate themselves as costs come down while capacity increases, and how clouds can help in the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. But before that, Anthony and James look at how Orbital Insight will deploy a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model and how Trading Technologies will launch an order management system (OMS) in 2019. In the News 2:30 As Orbital Insight expands the number of retailers it tracks and adds geolocation data to its offering, it will eventually deploy a PaaS model for do-it-yourself geospatial analytics. https://www.waterstechnology.com/connectivity-networks/data-delivery-technologies/3922846/orbital-insight-expands-telemetry-footprint-considers-new-delivery-service 7:30 Trading Technologies has announced the 2019 launch of an OMS designed for sell-side

This week, Anthony and James look at key themes that arose at several conferences from around the globe over the last two weeks: Brexit and how it will impact Mifid II, disillusionment with blockchain, and data quality challenges. 2:00 Shocking, there are major data challenges relating to Mifid II, according to the chairman of the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) Robert Ophéle. Get this: there’s a lot of regulatory arbitrage, the data quality being reported “leaves much to be desired” and they may need to enact “a number of legislative fixes.” https://www.waterstechnology.com/reference-data-data-management/data-governance/3908211/financial-watchdog-mifid-ii-data-quality-difficult 10:30 Another shocker, some exchanges are not quite finding value stemming from their blockchain proofs-of-concept. Fortunately, we have Nouriel Roubini to speak some truth to power. https://www.waterstechnology.com/trading-floor-technologies/3908021/exchanges-still-seeking-blockchain-uses https://www.banking.senate.gov/i

This week, Octavio Marenzi, co-founder and CEO of Opimas, joins the podcast to look at how capital markets firms are incorporating web-scrapping tools in their investment processes, and examines some of the key challenges they face. But before that, with the Blackstone-led consortium’s acquisition of Thomson Reuters’ Financial & Risk business closed, Anthony and James talk about what might be ahead for the newly renamed Refinitiv. 2:30-11 A look at Refinitiv. 11:30 In a recent report, Marenzi and his colleague Anna Griem looked at the web data extraction market. He explains why they thought this would be an interesting sector to examine. 13:00 What information are hedge funds, asset managers and others trying to find, and what types of tools are they using? 16:00 One major trend in the space is a move away from building internally and toward spending with third-party companies. 18:00 What are the common causes of these projects going awry? 24:00 Looking at the internet as the ultimate dataset and

This week, Eric Bernstein, president of Broadridge’s asset management solutions business, joins the podcast to discuss some of the challenges that buy-side firms in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region are facing, as they try an incorporate emerging technologies amid a fragmented regulatory environment. Before that, Anthony and James talk about two companies that are changing course. 1:00 IHS Markit has decided to take MarkitSERV, its post-trade processing business, off the market. Anthony and James look at potential reasons for the decision. 10:15 Algomi is shifting its focus toward its Alfa platform. It’s been a series of ups-and-downs for the vendor, and Anthony and James examine what this next move can move 19:30 Eric joins the podcast. As buy-side shops try to incorporate new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, what have been some of the main challenges? 21:00 How have data needs changed? 22:30 Eric breaks down the fragmented regulatory environment in APAC. 28:30 H

This week, Anthony and James first look at Nasdaq’s $190 million bid for Cinnober Financial Technologies (1:00-9:30) and then they examine what Wall Street has learned in the 10 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers (9:30-22:30). Contrary to some, they think that the industry has learned many lessons since September 2008. They wrap things up by taking a peek at New York University (NYU) offering a major in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology and why that’s a sign of a larger problem (22:30-33:00). https://www.waterstechnology.com/organization-management/alliances-mergers-acquisitions/3863826/nadsdaq-makes-190-million-bid-for-cinnober

Gerard Francis, global head of enterprise data for Bloomberg, joins Anthony Malakian on the podcast to discuss data fragmentation issues in the capital markets. Bloomberg announced this week the launch of Enterprise Access Point, an online open data and linked data platform that provides normalized reference, pricing, regulatory and historical datasets for Bloomberg Data License clients. Toward the end, they get into the product itself a bit more, but the point of this podcast is to look at the underlying trends that led to the launch of Enterprise Access Point and, specifically, the challenges firms are facing when it comes to data fragmentation. 1:15 Gerard joins the podcast and gives a quick primer on Bloomberg’s Enterprise Data business. 2:15 Why is data fragmentation becoming more of an issue in today’s environment? 6:00 The cost of data. 7:30 The difference between dirty data and quality data. 10:00 Examples of challenges that arise when data fragmentation becomes an issue. 12:00 The rise of th

This week Anthony and James dig into IHS Markit's new cloud-based TradeServ platform, which will eventually replace MarkitSERV's DSMatch platform, and host MarkitWire, Markit Trade Manager, among others. Since the rollout is also connected to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.'s (DTCC) new Trade Information Warehouse (TIW), which will be built using blockchain technology and is expected to be rolled out in 2019, they then take a look at blockchain projects in the industry, including some thoughts from Nasdaq. (2:00-13:30) Finally, they close the show with a rant about the stupidity of the past week in politics. (14:00-end) IHS Markit Overhaul: https://www.waterstechnology.com/connectivity-networks/3845446/ihs-markit-overhauls-derivatives-nerve-center-with-tradeserv-launch DTCC Blockchain: https://www.waterstechnology.com/infrastructure-technologies/3845566/dtcc-blockchain-platform-scheduled-for-early-2019-launch Nasdaq Profile: https://www.waterstechnology.com/people/3845756/nasdaqs-twin-pillars-brad-p