The Justinian

I’ve recently realized that the industry I work in is a microcosm of markets globally. Retail spot forex (foreign exchange, currency trading, FX) has rapidly gone through the phases of initiation and fast growth, and is in the middle of the “new competition” phase in the United States at least. This is where […]

A friend sent me over an article. If you work on Wall Street, have aspirations to work on Wall Street, or even if you just work, you should read it.

Nowhere is the move from floor-traded exchanges to electronic trading more obvious than on the NYMEX, the New York Mercantile Exchange. In the past, and especially leading up to that exchange’s recent IPO, seat prices–which gave the owner the right to trade on the exchange’s floor along with voting right and partial ownership–were the […]

Hedge funds recently ticked up above the $2 trillion mark after record monthly inflows. Mutual funds, not to be outdone, themselves passed the $10 trillion mark according to the Wall Street Journal:
Mutual-fund assets surpassed $10 trillion for the first time in October, according the fund industry’s trade group, the Investment Company Institute. Mutual-fund assets […]

I’ve made mention of the fierce NY-London financial rivalry in a previous post. For the uninitiated, the basic argument is that restrictive laws and policies (like Sarbanes-Oxley) have caused New York to lose its edge in financial markets. Large companies looking to go public have instead turned to London and in many cases […]

General Motors shares continue to tumble down to 31.09 from 32.61 yesterday, after pushing 36 last week. Kirk Kerkorian decided to cut his investment and move it toward the gaming industry. Business Week had an article about it. Here are some of the highlights:
On the same day, Nov. 22, that Kerkorian’s company, […]

Bid $5 billion. That’s what the Nasdaq chose to do in its latest effort to purchase the London Stock Exchange. The LSE has twice rejected Nasdaq’s offer, first for the equivalent of 950p (in March 2006), and this time for over 25% more, or 12.43 sterling. It seems the American exchange that […]

Which Web 2.0 site is the most popular? I’ll use two methods to find out…
Following the number of searches may be inaccurate because some sites don’t get as much traffic from search engines relative to others, but it does show what people what to find and are actively typing in, so it has merit.

Provided […]

We all know the big guys in the online travel field: Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz.  There are some new players however picking up ground quickly.  The heavily promoted priceline.com with television ads by William Shatner are indeed funny, but take a look at this:

Kayak.com just began outranking cheaptickets.com and priceline.com this week after passing hotwire.com […]

Dreaming of one day running your own hedge fund? You may be too late to the party. As more and more managers have chased after the potential for compensation in the tens and hundreds of millions, the returns offered by funds have dwindled substantially, to the point where funds are not even able […]