This Week: Nasdaq, Trading Technologies/Nodal, Finantix, GLMX/UnaVista

Nasdaq Acquires Solovis

Nasdaq has acquired Solovis, which offers multi asset-class portfolio management, analytics, and reporting tools across public and private markets. 

Solovis solutions will be available through Nasdaq’s eVestment group, extending eVestment’s capabilities with portfolio analysis and monitoring for institutional investors and consultants. 

Solovis is complementary to the more than 600 institutional investors currently using eVestment for manager screening. Solovis will provide them with a unified line of sight into their portfolios, performance, and risk across asset classes. 

The co-founders of Solovis, Josh Smith and Caleb Doise, along with the rest of the company, will remain in place and operate out of offices in Dallas; Charlottesville, Virginia; and San Francisco. 

Trading Technologies and Nodal Exchange Collaborate to Provide Market Access

Trading software, infrastructure, and data solutions provider Trading Technologies (TT) is collaborating with Nodal Exchange to have Nodal’s contracts available to trade through the TT platform. 

Nodal Exchange is a derivatives exchange providing price, credit, and liquidity risk management solutions to North American commodities market participants.

Clients will have access to TT’s full suite of tools, including functionality for charting and analytics, algo design, automated trading, mobile trading, FIX services and API development, to trade on all products listed on Nodal Exchange.

These products include power, natural gas, environmental, and trucking freight contracts.

RJO Taps Eventus for Surveillance and Monitoring

Chicago-based futures brokerage and clearing firm R.J. O’Brien & Associates (RJO) has elected to use market surveillance and real-time risk monitoring tools provided by Eventus Systems through the Validus platform. 

RJO conducted an extensive international search before selecting Eventus and expects its cloud deployment of the Validus platform to go live on April 1. 

The Validus software platform has hundreds of pre-built surveillance procedures that allow clients to tailor to their own standards and regulatory requirements. The trade surveillance solution offers both machine learning and a procedural approach to reduce false-positive alerts and foster intelligent issue resolution. 

Finantix Acquires AI Specialist InCube

Finantix, a technology provider to the wealth management, insurance, and banking industries, has announced it will acquire Zurich-based InCube Group. 

InCube Group has an interdisciplinary team of artificial intelligence (AI) specialists, software engineers, and finance experts who focus on full-stack product development and expertise-driven consulting for financial institutions. 

The acquisition will strengthen Finantix’s platform by augmenting it with InCube’s AI, robotics, and cognitive technologies. It will also allow Finantix to expand its presence in the Swiss and global wealth management and insurance markets. 

GLMX Joins UnaVista’s Partner Program

Electronic securities financing trading platform GLMX has joined UnaVista’s partner program to simplify Securities Financing Transaction Regulation (SFTR) reporting requirements for market participants. 

SFTR will take effect in April and is designed to increase transparency in the repo markets. However, it presents a complex reporting challenge for firms. 

As part of the program, GLMX is directly connected to the trade repository on behalf of clients, streamlining the SFTR reporting process. 

GLMX said it will continue to collaborate with leading European trade repositories ahead of SFTR implementation. 

TransFICC and SoftSolutions Partner on Interest Rate Swaps

TransFICC, a low-latency connectivity and workflow services provider for fixed income and derivatives markets, has teamed up with SoftSolutions, a developer of high-performance mission-critical platforms, to provide clients with connectivity and workflow solutions for interest rate swaps (IRS).

By using TransFICC’s One API for eTrading platform, clients of SoftSolutions will have access to IRS e-trading, as well as rates and credits services. The two companies will support specific workflow functionality demanded by the swaps market, including request for quote, request for stream, request for market, process trades, and lists/compression trading. The product scope includes vanilla, custom outrights, or multi-leg packages. 

FIA and Greenwich Associates Release Derivatives Market Study 

The Futures Industry Association (FIA) and Greenwich Associates, a provider of data, analytics, and insights, have released a study on trading and clearing trends in derivatives markets. 

The study assesses market sentiment toward several major market structure trends, including the impact of capital requirements, the adoption of central clearing, the transition away from Libor, and the implementation of margin requirements on uncleared derivatives.

The research was based on responses from nearly 200 market participants to a questionnaire distributed by the two organizations in the fourth quarter of 2019. 

According to the study, most respondents had a positive outlook for the derivatives markets, expecting improvements in liquidity and product usage in the next 12 months. Also, reducing barriers to cross-border trading and clearing topped the list of changes they would like from policymakers. Asset managers and hedge funds cited “reduced counterparty risk” and “increased operational efficiency” as the most important economic incentives to use clearing.