Kevin on the Street

Kevin’s blog has moved

kevinonthestreet — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:46:24 +0000

Please visit the new site at http://kevinonthestreet.com

Wall Street & Technology – Sybase Acquires Aleri to Enhance Real-Time Analytics Product Suite

kevinonthestreet — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:03:14 +0000

If Aleri was having financial difficulties, Aleri’s competitors and industry observers were not aware of the fact. Mark Palmer, CEO of StreamBase Systems, a CEP provider and direct competitor to Aleri, said in an interview: “Aleri made some moves that should have put them in a good cash position. In the market, the products are well regarded and I would have guessed that they were doing pretty well.”

Kevin McPartland, senior analyst, Tabb group, also hadn’t heard of any financial difficulties. “I don’t think anyone was concerned with the health of Aleri,” he said in an interview. “The story of Coral8 and Aleri worked well.”

Full Story Here

CDS Clearing: How do we know it works?

kevinonthestreet — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:55:45 +0000

Come March, CDS clearing will have been available for a full year. After months of political pressure and industry commitments, open interest for cleared CDS is well into the billions, volumes are well into the trillions, three clearinghouses are officially live and industry estimates (including those of TABB Group) show that CDS clearing will generate hundreds of millions in revenue. Sounds like a success to me. Or is it?

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HedgeWorld – Flagspotting: Due Diligence Should Involve Asking Hedge Fund Managers Tough Technology Questions

kevinonthestreet — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:54:01 +0000

“Even for the smallest funds, especially for equities, there is no reason why every step of the process shouldn’t be 100 percent automated,” said Kevin McPartland, an analyst with the TABB Group.

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Bloomberg – Goldman Tops JPMorgan as Best Broker as Speed Shakes Up Trading

kevinonthestreet — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:33:45 +0000

Goldman’s technology and its access to a large pool of potential buyers and sellers help it to search for — and find — liquidity at the best price for customers.

“The winning brokers coordinated across trading desks within their company,” says Kevin McPartland, a senior analyst at New York-based Tabb Group. “Their software-development and server technology teams worked together efficiently.”

Full Story Here

Wall Street Letter – Tweeting with @WallStLetter—Collateral Management

kevinonthestreet — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:04:09 +0000

Wall Street Letter conducted its first “twitterview,” or an interview over Twitter.com, on Feb. 27 on transparency and efficiency in the collateral management process. Managing editor Jeanene Timberlake tweeted with John Avery, a partner at SunGard Consulting Services, and Kevin McPartland, an analyst at the TABB Group, on how buy- and sell-side concerns have changed and how automation can help with the process.

Wall Street Letter: What is the biggest concern buy-side firms have related to collateral management now? And what about the sellside?

Kevin McPartland: An OTC derivatives market, part cleared, part bilateral, complicates collateral management. Improved collateral management technology should help ease the burden.

Full Article Here

Data Center Knowledge – Is Wall Street Ready for Cloud Computing?

kevinonthestreet — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:16:56 +0000

But that could change dramatically if financial regulators took a more active role, he said. “If the SEC, CFTC or the proper regulatory body looked at certain cloud environments and was able to certify that they were secure enough for customer data, then we would see a whole new industry within the cloud computing world of financial services-targeted firms, that would be registered with regulators and clients could be assured that their data was secure,” says McPartland. “We think this could be a huge improvement for the industry.”

Full Story Here

Securities Industry News – Derivatives Regulation Could Be Bonanza for Clearing Houses

kevinonthestreet — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:17:10 +0000

“The major issues will stay pretty close to what they are in the House,” says Kevin McPartland, a senior analyst at New York-based research firm Tabb Group and author of “OTC Derivatives Regulatory Update,” a report released January 11 on the outlook for derivatives regulation and its impact on the industry.

McPartland says clearing houses could be big winners, as they expand existing electronic systems to clear OTC derivatives contracts between member firms. In the case of standardized swaps contracts, the technology employed will streamline the post-trade process. This will remove considerable operational risk from the once-manual process of clearing OTC derivatives.

Full Story Here

Information Management – Getting the Message: Middleware Matters

kevinonthestreet — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:20:33 +0000

In a study released earlier this month, “U.S. Equity Technology 2010: The Sell Side Perspective,” Tabb Group senior analyst Kevin McPartland noted that all bulge bracket firms are “currently either using some form of hardware acceleration or are investigating its use.”

“Third-party middleware products have reached a level of sophistication that the cost required to build a better, faster solution in-house are often hard to justify,” McPartland told Securities Industry News. “However, legacy platforms that were born before the current crop of middleware products, and systems based on paradigms different than those used to create traditional messaging middleware do and will continue to exist.”

Full Story Here

GeithnerGate: Love Him or Leave Him?

kevinonthestreet — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:18:55 +0000

An investigation into the government rescue of AIG unearthed emails showing that the NY Federal Reserve, at that time under the control of now Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, strongly encouraged AIG to hold back public announcement of parts of its derivatives portfolio and the billions in collateral payments it made to its dealer counterparties. Many are now calling for Sec. Geithner’s head claiming that he intentionally withheld critical information from American taxpayers; information they were entitled to have as AIG was bailed out with taxpayer money. Although I can see why his actions in this case would put people off, Sec. Geithner and the NY Fed did not deceive, but protect the US economy.

Full Story Here