3rd Biggest US BrokerDealer Says SEC Should Slash Exchange Fees To Make Trading More Transparent

Posted on August 13, 2014 by admin

BrokerDealer.com blog update courtesy of extracts from Bloomberg LP and Traders Magazine

(Bloomberg) — Citigroup Inc., the third-biggest U.S. brokerdealer, told regulators they could steer more stock trading to public exchanges by making it more affordable.

The bank suggested the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cut the highest amount that can be levied to trade by at least two-thirds, according to a letter from Daniel Keegan, head of Americas equities at Citigroup. Most exchanges charge the maximum, 30 cents per 100 shares, leading traders to favor lower-cost dark pools, he wrote. His statement aligns Citigroup, which runs alternative trading platforms, with two of the biggest exchange operators.

Citi’s Daniel Keegan

As part of a rule change that took effect in 2007, the SEC “somewhat arbitrarily established a cap on access fees that can be charged to access liquidity on exchanges,” Keegan wrote in an Aug. 7 letter posted on the regulator’s website. “This cap should be revisited in light of today’s market economics.”

More than 15 percent of U.S. equity volume takes place on dark pools, according to Tabb Group LLC. NYSE Group Inc. and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., two of the three big U.S. stock exchange owners, have both advocated regulatory measures to lure trading off the systems. Accusations of wrongdoing on the private systems have intensified this year amid Michael Lewis’s “Flash Boys” and a probe by New York’s attorney general, who alleged Barclays Plc misled its dark-pool clients.

Dark pools proliferated in the past decade as brokers sought to reduce the amount of money they pay the NYSE and Nasdaq Stock Market. Instead of giving exchanges trading fees, brokers could match buyers and sellers on their own systems.

The SEC’s Regulation NMS, which took effect in 2007, helped solidify that business model by allowing stock trades to occur on whatever market had the best price at a given time, be it public or private. Reg NMS also set the maximum exchange access fee at 30 cents per 100 shares, also known as 30 mils.

Citigroup’s LavaFlow Inc. division runs the 10th-biggest alternative trading system for U.S. stocks and charges 28 mils for shares priced above $1. It’s an electronic communication network, not a dark pool, meaning more data about trading is publicly available.

Citigroup’s suggestion of reducing the access-fee cap to 10 mils or lower could also restrain rebates that exchanges pay traders who facilitate transactions, a practice known as maker- taker that has been attacked by lawmakers and critics such as IEX Group Inc. and the chief executive officer of NYSE’s owner, Intercontinental Exchange Inc.

Rewarding Brokers

Stock markets use fees from traders to reward brokers who send them orders, a model some academics and money managers such as Invesco Ltd. and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. say creates a conflict of interest. Last month, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, told the SEC it should abolish the payments to improve confidence in U.S. stock markets.

Jeffrey Sprecher, the CEO of ICE, said during a recent congressional roundtable that exchange access fees should be reduced. His company, as well as Nasdaq, have endorsed a proposal called the trade-at rule, which would keep stock trades off dark pools unless those venues improved upon prices available on exchanges.

Nasdaq, operator of the largest exchange by volume, generated $1.1 billion in revenue from U.S. equities transactions in 2013 and gave out $743 million in rebates, according to an SEC filing. The comparable figures at NYSE Euronext, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange that ICE bought in November 2013, were $1.06 billion and $796 million, respectively, in 2012.

BrokerDealers Beware: Watch Your Step Before You Skip (To a New Firm)

Posted on August 12, 2014August 12, 2014 by admin

BrokerDealer.com blog post courtesy of extract from 11 August InvestmentNews.com column by Mason Braswell

Brokerage firms may be monitoring their brokers’ investment accounts for signs that a broker is about to jump ship.

Firms have long monitored brokers’ personal trading accounts for signs of suspicious trading activity. But certain behaviors — such as large withdrawals, moving assets into the accounts owned by family members or suddenly liquidating shares in proprietary products — may also suggest that a broker is planning to switch to another firm.

Indeed, brokers who make big changes to their accounts in anticipation of a job change run the risk of being fired or even facing legal consequences, said Sharron Ash, chief litigation counsel at the Hamburger Law firm, which specializes in representing brokers in transition.

“It’s certainly something that brokers who are planning a transition have to be cognizant of,” she said. “If it falls into the broader basket of anything out of the ordinary it could throw up a red flag.”

Brokers are required to custody their personal investment accounts, and those of their immediate family, at the firms they work for.

Those who are planning to quit often withdraw large sums ahead of the move to cover transition costs, such as paying for property when starting their own office. Also, brokers that owe money on large upfront recruiting loans may also withdraw funds in an attempt to thwart their firms from freezing their assets after they quit.

Liquidating positions in funds held by their firm is frequently done in advance of a move because those products may not transfer easily.

Firms do not take such moves lightly. Continue reading →

Study Says: BrokerDealers Still In Need of Brand Burnishing

Posted on August 11, 2014 by admin

BrokerDealer.com blog update courtesy of extract from 10 July NY Post, reporter Gregory Bresiger.

Wall Street’s reputation, despite a 5-year bull market, still stinks.

Indeed, the bankers’ “chronic risk image” remains a huge problem, say many of the mid-level pros who work for its largest firms.

The Street’s regulatory and image problems continue to spook many traders and bankers, who say the risks and dangers of the industry are about the same as before the stock market meltdown of 2008, according to the results of the Makovsky Wall Street Reputation Study.

“The 2014 study findings question how far financial services brands have advanced since the financial crisis,” according to Scott Tangney, executive vice president at Makovsky.

“The industry,” he adds, “is walking on a tightrope, with the combination of negative perception, regulator actions and greater risk sapping reputation and financial performance.”

Financial services continue to be “pummeled by negative perception and regulatory overhaul and action,” according to poll respondents.

The biggest perception problems for the industry, the poll found, were “negative public perception” (64 percent) and “regulatory actions” (55 percent). The latter includes investigations, lawsuits and fines.

Other highlights of the Makovsky study include: (to continue reading, please click here to the NY Post article)

Canada Medical Marijuana Co. Floats Shares on Frankfurt Exchange

Posted on August 9, 2014May 3, 2018 by admin

Vodis Pharmaceuticals Inc. (the “Company” or “Vodis”) (CSE: VP FSE: 1JV) announced that it has listed its common shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FWB) under the ticker symbol “1JV ” and the International Securities Identification Number (ISIN): CA92858L1031. The Frankfurt Stock Exchange is the world’s third-largest (behind only the Nasdaq Stock Market and New York Stock Exchange) organized exchange-trading market in terms of turnover and dealings in securities. The Company’s shares continue to trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange as the primary market.stock listing on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE): Vodis Innovative Pharmaceuticals Inc.(CNSX:VP)

Otto Folprecht, CEO & Director states: “The listing on the Frankfurt stock exchange will help to increase Vodis Pharmaceuticals’ trading liquidity and facilitate investment in the company by European investors.”

About Vodis

Vodis is one of Canada’s foremost brand names in the medical marijuana business. Our products have consistently won or placed at each competition we have entered. The company is in the application process to become a Licenced Producer at our 12,000 square foot facility in Canada.

CEO of BrokerDealer Electronic Exchange Platform IEX Speaks Out (Again)

Posted on August 8, 2014 by admin

In a July 9 BrokerDealer.com blog post, we profiled the coverage of start-up company IEX, the innovative and self-acknowledged “disruptive” institutional equities order execution platform for brokerdealers that has received unheralded PR courtesy of the book “Flash Boys”, written by former securities industry member Michael Lewis.

Subsequent to BrokerDealer.com being contacted by IEX communications executive Gerald Lam in his effort to set the record straight re: erroneous news media coverage, this blog has kept an eye on IEX; below are extracts from an op-ed article written by IEX CEO Brad Katsuyama to Bloomberg LP and published on Aug 3

‘Flash Boys’ and the Speed of Lies

65 Aug 3, 2014 6:03 PM EDT

By Brad Katsuyama

IEX CEO Brad Katsuyama, Image Courtesy of Wall St. Journal

In the last few months, I have had a strange and interesting experience. In early April, I found myself the main character in Michael Lewis’s book “Flash Boys.” It told the story of a quest I’ve been on, with my colleagues, to expose and to prevent a lot of outrageous behavior in the U.S. stock market.

Many of us had worked at big Wall Street brokerdealer firms or inside stock exchanges, and many of us believed something was amiss in the market. But it took the better part of five years to discover exactly how the market had been organized to benefit financial intermediaries, rather than the investors, the companies or the economy it was meant to serve. Only after looking at a flurry of market innovations — 40-gigabit cross-connects, esoteric order types, microwave towers — did we understand that the market’s focus was less about capital formation and more about giving certain market participants an advantage over others. In the end, we felt that the best way to solve these problems was to build a stock market of our own, which we did.

After the book, our stock market, IEX Group Inc., became a topic of discussion — some positive, some negative, some true and some false. Fair enough. If you’re in the spotlight and doing something different, you should take the heat along with the light.

It’s for this reason that we have done our best to resist responding publicly to misinformation about our company — even when we read memos circulated inside banks that “Michael Lewis has an undisclosed stake in IEX” (he does not); that “brokers own stakes in IEX” (they don’t); or articles in the Wall Street Journal that said we let “broker-dealers jump to the front of the trading queue,” putting retail investors and mutual funds at a disadvantage (in reality, all orders arrive at IEX via brokers, including those from traditional investors). Our hope in staying quiet was that the truth would win out in the end. But in recent weeks, the misinformation campaign has hit a new high (or low), and on one particularly critical matter, we feel compelled to set the record straight.

For the entirety of IEX CEO Brad Katsuyama’s Aug 3 op-ed piece to Bloomberg News, in which he seeks to dispel the erroneous information published by industry news media and select broker-dealer industry analysts, please visit the Bloomberg site at http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-08-03/flash-boys-and-the-speed-of-lies

For those who are challenged with reading, Katsuyama was interviewed on Bloomberg TV Aug 5…The link to that video is http://www.bloomberg.com/video/iex-s-katsuyama-on-hft-full-exchange-ambitions-B0MB~4T7SIiBquvLC8nbLQ.html