Wall Street BrokerDealer Aims To Support Veterans

Posted on November 6, 2014 by admin

BrokerDealer.com blog update courtesy of Traders Magazine

In honor of the upcoming U.S. Veteran’s day holiday, one Wall Street institutional broker is increasing the amount of profits it donates that are aimed to help U.S. servicemen and women.

Veteran’s Day is next Tuesday, November 11.

Mischler Financial. a California-based investment bank and institutional brokerage owned and operated by Service-Disabled Veterans, announced it is expanding its current give-back program. This year, the broker is donating a portion of its profits to three additional and separate non-profit organizations in honor of those who have served the country’s military.

The new charities are:

The Bob Woodruff Foundation
Children of Fallen Patriots
BuildOn.org

Dean Chamberlain, CEO Mischler Financial Group

“Through our ongoing commitment to Veterans on Wall Street, this Veteran’s Day we are honored to pledge our financial support to these new organizations,” said Dean Chamberlain, chief executive and principal of Mischler Financial Group. “We also look forward to continuing our commitment to the non-profit devoted to inspiring our young generation to drive positive change through community service and education.”

Headquartered in Newport Beach, California with regional offices in Stamford, CT, Boston, MA and Chicago, IL., Mischler Financial Group is a federally-certified minority broker-dealer and a Service-Disabled Veterans Business Enterprise. It provides capital markets services, agency-only execution within the global equities and fixed income markets and asset management for liquid and alternative investment strategies

Wall Street Women On Top: BrokerDealer and Buyside Gals Score Awards For…

Posted on October 9, 2014October 9, 2014 by admin

Brokerdealer.com blog update profiles Broker-Dealer industry publication Traders Magazine’s “2014 Women of Excellence Awards”

“..Unveiled last night, the 2014 “Wall Street Women: Celebration of Excellence” Awards cited 19 of what one NYSE floor trader called “The Street’s Smartest and Sweetest Gals” for their performance across 19 categories, including leadership, mentorship and trading.

Mary Clark, ETF Trading Desk, WallachBeth Capital

Giving equal accolades to women from both sides of the market aisle (buy-side investment managers and sell-side broker-dealers), in the “most-watched” equities trading category, Blackrock’s Vivian Bakonyi, the buyside firm’s program trading “czarina” shared the top slot with the sell-side’s “dame doyenne of ETF best execution,” industry veteran Mary Clark of WallachBeth Capital.

For Mentor of The Year, Traders Mag judges also came to a split decision, with top honors shared by Citigroup’s MD Of Global Markets Christine Sperry and OhioPERs trader Joan Stack.

BrokerDealer.com salutes all of the nominees and each of the winners!

The full list of winners is available by clicking on this link to TradersMag.

Wedbush Securities in Hot Water with SEC over AML Deficiencies

Posted on August 20, 2014 by admin

BrokerDealer.com blog post courtesy of extract from tradersmagazine.com and John D’Antona Jr.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced Monday that it has filed a complaint against Los Angeles-based Wedbush Securities Inc. for systemic supervisory and anti-money laundering (AML) violations in connection with providing direct market access and sponsored access to broker-dealers and non-registered market participants.

During the period at issue, Wedbush was one of the securities industry’s largest market access providers, which included overseas high-frequency, high-volume, algorithmic day-trading firms, and made millions of dollars from its market access business.

The complaint alleges that from January 2008 through August 2013, Wedbush failed to dedicate sufficient resources to ensure appropriate risk management controls and supervisory systems and procedures. This enabled its market access customers to flood U.S. exchanges with thousands of potentially manipulative wash trades and other potentially manipulative trades, including manipulative layering and spoofing. Continue reading →

Bahrain Stock Exchange Embraces NASDAQ Trading Engine

Posted on July 23, 2014 by admin

Brokerdealer.com blog update courtesy of extract from Traders Magazine 07.23 story by John D’Antona

A Middle East stock exchange is tapping the knowledge of one of the Northeast’s bourses.

The Bahrain Bourse and NASDAQ OMX have joined forces with the former activating its newest trading engine, which is powered by NASDAQ OMX’s X-stream trading platform. The project went live on Monday, July 14, providing Bahrain Bourse with a multi-asset trading platform.

“Replacing our trading platform is a milestone in the history of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s capital market, and is one of the key projects of the Bourse’s strategy that was adopted in 2011 to develop all work aspects at Bahrain Bourse,” said The Shaikh Khalifa bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa, chief executive at the Bahrain Bourse.

Bahrain’s new platform will enable it to provide more and advanced trading options for brokerdealers and investors and a variety of market participants, as well as create innovative products and services to match international demand. In addition to the new X-stream technology, the Middle East exchange will also continue to leverage the existing CSD technologies that have been provided and supported by NASDAQ OMX since 2000.

NASDAQ OMX’s exchange technology, including trading, clearing, CSD and market surveillance systems, is in operation in over 100 marketplaces across USA, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and Middle East.

The Bahrain Bourse was established as a shareholding company in 2010 to replace the Bahrain Stock Exchange that was established in 1987. There are 50 companies listed on the exchange, two mutual funds, and nine bonds/Islamic Sukuk. The three indices tracking the market’s performance are the Bahrain All Share Index, the Esterad Index (which consists of a basket of selected local-publicly listed companies), and the Dow Jones Bahrain Index.

Since its establishment, BHB has joined several regional and international organizations such as World Federation of Exchanges, Arab Federation of Exchanges, Federation of Euro-Asian Stock Exchanges and the Africa & Middle East Depositories Association.

BrokerDealers and Buyside: Bitcoin Coming to A Screen Near You

Posted on July 15, 2014January 27, 2018 by admin

Brokerdealer.com blog update courtesy of extract from Traders Magazine, the leading publication within securities industry’s sell-side (otherwise known as the universe of registered broker-dealers). Coverage for this story provided by TradersMag writer Gregg Wirth. Visitors to this page who may wish to know more about brokerdealers and institutional investors having an interest in bitcoins are invited to search the brokerdealer.com database.

Bitcoin, the crypto-currency that initially became infamous as the tender of choice for drug traffickers and mercenaries, may be coming to a trading desk or institutional portfolio near you – and sooner than you think.

“2014 is going to be the year Bitcoin hits Wall Street,” said Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of SecondMarket, a capital-raising platform for private companies and investment funds. Indeed, there is a growing consensus in some corners of Wall Street and the buyside community that the $7.8 billion Bitcoin industry is going to become the new, flashy darling of investors, with dedicated digital currency funds, venture capitalists and asset managers all chasing after those 12 million bitcoins currently in circulation.

“Digital currencies like Bitcoin are not going away,” Silbert explained. “And Wall Street and the regulators know this, they’ve studied how to deal with it, and now they are starting to understand its potential.” SecondMarket has gone heavy into the Bitcoin phenomenon, launching the Bitcoin Investment Trust, a $70 million open-ended trust that invests exclusively in bitcoins, as well as a dedicated desk of 10 traders who buy and sell bitcoins for the trust and other institutional clients. SecondMarket is also creating what it hopes to be the largest, best-capitalized and well-run Bitcoin exchange in the U.S., and is enlisting banks and Bitcoin-related firms to be exchange members.

“The number of inquiries and requests from finance industry professionals for us to prepare compliant investor offering documents for crypto-centric funds is certainly keeping us busy”, said Paul Azous, CEO of Prospectus.com. “We don’t see this as some type of anomaly that is connected to a short-term fad, many of the funds we are working with are forward-thinking folks who realize that blockchain applications will be expressed in nearly every business process.”

In addition to preparing investment fund offering documents, Prospectus.com helps blockchain-based startups craft white papers, presentation decks that resonate with accredited investors and through a captive network of crypto industry consultants, the firm guides those advancing Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

Continue reading →