Spencer Mindlin
New York
Bloomberg. Former Aite Analyst. Dad. Hoya. Husband.
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Articles by Spencer Mindlin
Capital Markets Fintech Spotlight: Q1 2021
Boston, March 25, 2021 – With regulations continuing to drive sales of third-party solutions for risk and capital analytics, financial institutions are exploring innovative and effective optimization services to enhance their balance sheets and redefine the concept of portfolio compression. Meanwhile, inventory management has become the heart of collateral management as the function transitions from the back office and post-trade optimization to the front office and pre-trade optimization.
Aite Matrix Client Reference Feedback: Multi-Asset Class TCA Becoming a Necessity
Boston, March 11, 2021 – The shift to offering multi-asset class TCA analytics is happening in earnest across third-party providers. Deep and robust tools will be necessary as clients continue to address inquiries from more sophisticated investors.
Forever Indebted: Fixed Income Worldview, 2020
London, 18 February 2021 –Global fixed income markets offer unparalleled opportunities for both corporations and nations to borrow, determine interest rates, and provide investors with a relatively reliable source of income. Despite the turbulent market conditions of the past year, fixed income continues to represent an important and unique asset class that provides the reliability that other asset classes typically cannot.
OMS/EMS Convergence in the Cloud: Better Together
Boston, February 2, 2021 –Execution management and order management systems—the linchpins of the front office—have come a long way in a relatively short period of time. Less than 15 years ago, clunky and expensive technology implementations were either created by asset managers or bought from specialized vendors that spent most of their time building platforms intended to deliver functional requirements and workflow needs.
Don’t Stop the Short Game: Fix the Flaws
By Spencer Mindlin and Christian Benson If you’re confused about what’s been going on with GameStop and its wider implications, you’re not alone. Throughout this week, I have been receiving inquiries from friends and colleagues keen to understand what this all means. The truth is that, far from being a simple market occurrence, the events of the past week represent the intersection of institutional investments, retail day-trading, equity market structure, and regulation.
Buy-Side Perspective: An Evolving Take on Outsourced Trading
Boston, January 14, 2021 – More buy-side firms are using outsourced trading strategically rather than simply to cut costs. Its benefits, such as speed to market, added operational efficiency, potential to trade new instruments or markets, and business continuity, are obvious. Could the service have potential use cases in most buy-side firms?
Buy-Side Perspective: An Evolving Take on Outsourced Trading
A new Aite Group report finds that the market for outsourced trading appears to be at an inflection point. Boston, January 14, 2021 — More buy-side firms are using outsourced trading strategically rather than simply to cut costs. Its benefits, such as speed to market, added operational efficiency, potential to trade new instruments or markets, and business continuity, are obvious.
CARES Act Corporate Credit Facilities: 28 Weeks Later
Boston, December 1, 2020 – The events in March 2020 were a true test of the North American corporate bond market structure. And the Federal Reserve’s actions were swift, aggressive, and effective. The Fed’s response calmed the markets, which started to tamp down volatility and compress spreads to more normal levels. While the market performed well overall, the stress revealed some of its shortcomings.
The State of Capital Markets Post-Pandemic: Major Paradigm Shifts
Boston, November 3, 2020 – Capital markets trading and risk management across the globe are often put to the test during the worst of circumstances. In the years that followed the financial crisis of 2008, regulations designed to rein in risks from counterparty credit were implemented across the spectrum of financial firms.
Innovation in Collateral Management: A Forward-Looking Perspective
Boston, October 28, 2020 – The 2008 financial crisis and the years following had a drastic impact on collateral management and elevated the importance of its operations as evidenced by many firms’ initiatives to create operational and technological efficiency in collateral management. As a result, collateral management is one of the few functions that is making a dramatic shift from the back office to the front office—a key evolution in a post-COVID-19 pandemic world.
Enduring the COVID-19 Pandemic: Broker-Dealer Success Factors
Boston, October 6, 2020 – The impact of this pandemic is undeniable, and the financial industry and broker-dealer community are not exceptions. Many have turned to cloud technologies to accommodate working remotely, and many sell-side firms have had to take appropriate actions to respond to heightened levels of volatility both in the markets and within their respective walls.
Outsourced Trading and COVID-19: Won’t You Be My Trader?
Boston, May 19, 2020 – In recent conversations with outsourced trading service providers, the sentiment on business conditions and prospects ahead comes across as extremely bullish. These outsourced trading desks purport to be conflict-free specialists in the trading function and are flexible, global, and cost-effective.
The ETF Ecosystem: Building Herd Immunity
Boston, May 5, 2020 –The global industry has experienced significant evolution and maturity across most of the value chain: The number of ETF listings has exploded, issuers offering different types and styles of ETFs have flourished, the ETF intermediaries have reached enormous scale, and the cost to invest, in some cases, has gone down to zero. The regulatory structure and market infrastructure supporting ETFs have evolved in several significant ways, too.
CARES Act: The Impact on U.S. Financial Institutions
On March 27, 2020, the U.S. president signed into law the US$2 trillion U.S. Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to provide economic relief to U.S. households and businesses in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The CARES Act has a number of implications for financial institutions.
Markets Are Locked Limit Down, but Not Out
Watching the markets and trying to navigate the volatility stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic can be gut-wrenching. Daily trading volume is breaking new records and has tripled since last month from about 6 billion shares to 18 billion shares. I wouldn’t want to tempt fate, but the U.S. markets, from an infrastructure and technology standpoint, are functioning without major issues. Market-makers have, in most cases, stepped up to provide the additional liquidity.
Exos Financial: Can Digitalization Save the Institutional Broker-Dealer Market?
Boston, February 5, 2020 – This Impact Brief provides a case study of Exos Financial, the industry’s first cloud-based, digital institutional broker-dealer, and its attempt to disrupt the status quo with its data-driven, technology-enabled institutional products and services. This report highlights both the challenges and the opportunities that give rise to Exos and its current and future strategy to develop the next-generation platform for institutional finance.
U.S. Listed Equity Options Markets: Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
Traders Magazine Online News, February 6, 2019 John D'Antona Jr. One of the most important trends in the U.S. options market to date is the exit of market-making firms. Many market-makers have packed up millions of dollars of technology and turned into professional traders—a move that diminishes market quality and transparency. But a meaningful, sustained shift to a new higher-volatility regime, driven by the macroeconomic environment shifts, would change the rules of the game.
U.S. Listed Equity Options Markets: Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
Boston, January 31, 2019 – One of the most important trends in the U.S. options market to date is the exit of market-making firms. Many market-makers have packed up millions of dollars of technology and turned into professional traders—a move that diminishes market quality and transparency. But a meaningful, sustained shift to a new higher-volatility regime, driven by the macroeconomic environment shifts, would change the rules of the game.
AIM Evaluation: Trade Surveillance and Monitoring Solutions
AIM Evaluation: Trade Surveillance and Monitoring Solutions Boston, January 10, 2019 – Despite being a non-profit-generating tool, surveillance technology has become a necessary area of investment to at least some degree for most financial industry firms. It’s also the largest area of compliance budget allocation for firms across financial industry segments, and surveillance technology implementation choices can hold serious sway with regulators during a firm evaluation or audit.
Members Exchange. Déjà vu?
As the sun rises on 2019, it will also be shining on a new equities exchange application. The launch of Members Exchange (MEMX), founded by a consortium of nine financial services firms, was announced this week, and according to the press release, it will apply for U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval in early 2019.
Buy-Side EMS Vendor AIM: The Tech Stacks of High Society
Boston, November 8, 2018 – The evolution and complexity of market microstructure, combined with increasing workflow demands placed on the buy-side trader, fertilized the growth of dedicated tools and solutions most commonly found in execution management systems. Most EMSs continue to have functionality rooted in the trade execution process, and the best-of-the-best buy-side traders demand best-in-class tools to deliver best execution to their portfolio managers and clients.
Buy-Side OMS AIM: Change Is Inevitable
Boston, August 9, 2018 – The last two years have been ripe with change in the order management system space. Regulatory developments in both the U.S. and Europe kept the entire industry on edge, electronic trading paradigms have finally bled over to fixed income and derivatives markets, and the industry has seen continued consolidation. Cost pressures and advances in technology have pushed firms to innovate in areas such as automation, artificial intelligence, and cloud deployment.
Brokers Paid $1.2B in 2017 to Deliver Tech
New research from Aite Group reported that the brokers are spending upwards of $1.2 billion to deliver trading solutions to their buy-side clients, who continue to ask for more. Adding insult to injury, commissions paid to the brokers remain flat to slightly lower – meaning they are absorbing any additional costs to provide technology.
OMS in Focus: The Light and Dark Sides of FIX and Client Connectivity
Boston, June 19, 2018 – Sell-side commissions are under pressure, as rates have dropped precipitously over the past 20 years and overall volumes have not recovered to their 2008 highs while the fees brokers pay to the buy-side’s vendors have not adjusted commensurately.
Boutique Asset Management: Leveraging Technology to Successfully Streamline
Boston, January 17, 2018 – Boutique asset managers are poised to capitalize on the resurgence of investor interest in actively managed investments. A key driver of this rebound, however, is the active management industry’s ability to reduce fees in order to compete with passive counterparts. This will require active asset managers to streamline their own operational costs—a process in which their technology strategies must play a role.
Seeking Clarity on MiFID II Inducement Trading Rules
With MIFID II’s rules on inducements now a reality, buy-side firms are paying close attention to the costs associated with their front-office trading platforms and analytics. The EU regulation, which took effect on Jan. 3, could draw scrutiny to execution services and tools that are sponsored by brokers, such as order management and execution management systems as well as trade analytics.
Boutique Asset Management: Behind the Velvet Rope
Boston, May 11, 2017 – Boutique asset management firms inhabit their own unique space in the global taxonomy of asset managers, and they find themselves on the precipice of change, just as the asset management industry in aggregate is poised to enter a new transitional phase. Some of the value-added aspects of the market and margin will undoubtedly exit the industry—permanently. However, boutiques provide investment strategies that are on the “alpha” side of the barbell.
Buy-Side Front-Office Trends: Consolidation of Desktop Tools
Boston, April 20, 2017 – As electronification expands across different asset classes and regions of the world, buy-side firms have continued to invest in the development and maintenance of their trading infrastructure. Over the last two decades, major buy-side firms globally have adopted OMSs and EMSs in droves. But as the buy-side has begun to consolidate its front-office technology footprint, both the OMS and EMS vendor markets remain competitive.
Buy-Side Front-Office Trends: The ABCs of Trading Behavior
Boston, March 16, 2017 – As electronification expands across different asset classes, instrument types, and investment activities throughout different regions of the world, buy-side firms have to upgrade and improve their front-office technology. And while the sell-side pulls back on loss-leading services, many buy-side firms are reinvesting in areas in which they can deliver value to their clients.
EMSAC: Through the Looking Glass
Boston, December 15, 2016 – U.S. equity markets have experienced sweeping transformations over the last 20 years, fueled by technological advancements and Regulation National Market System. Still, the marketplace is far from perfect, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission created the Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee to recommend reforms. EMSAC is approaching an inflection point as 2016 comes to a close and is almost finished formalizing its recommendations to the commission.
Equities Market Structure Evolution: From Commoditization to System Reboot
Boston, July 6, 2016 – The global equities market is at a crossroads. After years and hundreds of millions of dollars invested into building out and maintaining expensive trading infrastructures, firms face the harsh market reality of stagnant trade volume, low commission levels, and commoditization of electronic trading tools. In short, the sell-side is in search of the next elusive competitive differentiator. The search will not be easy.
Aite Group's First Takes in the Wake of Brexit
Brexit is no longer a question of “if” but “what now?” The implications of the U.K. vote to exit the European Union cannot be understated, and the process by which the largest financial center in the European Union will fundamentally change its role starts now. Here’s what some of Aite Group’s analysts have to say:
Tick Pilot - The Road Forward
By Ivy Schmerken, Editorial Director Trading in securities of some small cap companies will change next May when the industry is scheduled to implement the tick-size pilot widening spreads for more than 1,000 stocks. But like Y2K, Reg NMS and other regulatory projects, the technology changes are not trivial and they will impact the securities industry in terms of time and resources.
The Not-So-Great NYSE Outage of 2015
Many are attempting to rattle Main Street with claims that Wednesday’s NYSE outage should cause investors to fear for their retirement portfolios. Worse, conspiracy theorists were quick to conclude that the multiple outages Wednesday, including those of United Airlines, The Wall Street Journal’s website, and the NYSE, were the result of a coordinated cyberattack. Once done with the knee-jerk reactions, here are a few things to consider:
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