Professional fees are out. Third-party research is in. And probably the Bloomberg terminal. Investment managers have long received research and other services through bundled commissions that they pay to their brokers, which often can be another division within a larger dealer firm. The practice, known as soft dollars, has come under regulatory scrutiny to make […]
As competitive alternative marketplaces begin to vie with the Toronto Stock Exchange, Canada has gone through in two years what the United States took a decade to achieve in fostering electronic trading platforms, regulators say. These new marketplaces are draining trading volume away from traditional exchanges; indeed, some of them are stock exchanges, while others […]
Over different market cycles, inverse ETFs have proven popular with some investors. But what they expected to get and what they got has become a source of consternation — and complaint. Exchange-traded funds — essentially index funds targeted at broad market benchmarks or narrower sectoral plays such as gold or oil — are by now […]
Failure, it is said, is of uncertain paternity, while victory has many parents. In the midst of a severe financial crisis, blame seeks a ready target. And yet, every financial crisis has a pattern that unfolds with predictable excesses, villains and scapegoats. If you canvass people who are distant from financial services, invariably they will […]
Not so long ago, only a decade, retail investors were wringing their hands about outages on the Toronto Stock Exchange, which sometimes failed to provide high-speed access for day-trading in Nortel stock. They envied the U.S., with its multiple exchanges, including electronic communications networks (ECNs) that provided trading in Nasdaq stocks. Ironically, the Nasdaq stocks […]
Failure, it is said, is of uncertain paternity, while victory has many parents. In the midst of a severe financial crisis, blame seeks a ready target. And yet, every financial crisis has a pattern that unfolds with predictable excesses, villains and scapegoats. If you canvass people who are distant from financial services, invariably they will […]
Big pension plans have something that small pension plans need, says the head of one of Canada’s largest public pension plans. It’s the capacity to do due diligence, Michael Nobrega, president and CEO of OMERS to the Conference Board of Canada’s annual pension summit in Toronto on Monday. In reviewing the global financial crisis, he […]
It seems odd that crisis brings out vigorous debate, while good times encourage a certain placidity. Certainly, no one’s ready to say it’s time to jump back in the water again, — the underlying assumptions have not changed. But one has to wonder whether there would be so much spirited comment if there were not […]
Behavioural economists are having a field day with the market meltdown, as traditional cost-benefit analysis and self-interest give way to more penetrating insights about how people can be systematically wrong — and how small acts can lead to broader failures. “This whole thing with the market falling was very good for us,” says Dan Ariely, […]
For many, compliance is about know your client forms and trade blotters — that which is circumscribed by securities regulation. That model, however, may well be broken, not so much because of what it prescribes, but because of what it leaves out. The financial crisis has highlighted two issues. The first is that risk comes […]