Nasa buys into ‘quantum’ computer

It will be shared by Google, Nasa, and other scientists, providing access to a machine said to be up to 3,600 times faster than conventional computers. Unlike standard machines, the D-Wave Two processor appears to make use of an effect called quantum tunnelling.

via Pocket http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22554494#TWEET758009 May 16, 2013 at 06:49PM

CAT’s eyes on the US market (or Consolidated Audit Trail SEC Rule 613)

CAT’s eyes on the US market

Posted by Jess Haberman, Fidessa on  Mar 12, 2013

While Europe still doesn’t have a consolidated post-trade tape, US regulators are moving forward with an ambitious plan that will eventually provide them with a detailed view of the entire market, readily available on a next-day basis. After the usual drawn-out process to approve SEC Rule 613, the industry has started work on the Consolidated Audit Trail, or CAT.

The SEC has charged the seventeen US national securities exchanges and independent regulator FINRA (collectively the SROs, or self-regulatory organizations) to come up with the plan to develop this comprehensive audit trail of orders that will allow regulators to track all activity in NMS securities throughout the US markets.

Last week thirty-one companies, including exchange operators BATS Global Markets, the NYSE Technologies unit of NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq OMX, as well as FINRA (the industry regulator), Google and IBM, indicated they plan to submit bids, via an RFP process, to build and operate the CAT.

FINRA hosted a meeting in New York last Friday for these companies to discuss the bidding process.

RFPs are due by April 25 and the exchanges and FINRA expect to “preliminarily” select the successful bidder by July. Broker-dealers may need to start reporting CAT information sometime in 2015

Big Data, Magical Thinking and Investment Management

All information technology essentially offers an abstraction from an underlying reality, enabling that reality to be understood in simpler, more human centric and hopefully better ways.

via Pocket http://www.finextra.com/Community/FullBlog.aspx?blogid=7443 March 14, 2013 at 09:29PM

Google to Face Off with FINRA, Exchanges in Audit Trail Bidding

http://www.securitiestechnologymonitor.com/news/google-to-face-off-with-finra-exchanges-in-audit-trail-bidding-31629-1.html?ET=securitiesindustry:e4229:190117a:&st=email&utm_source=editorial&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=STM_BNA_08302010_030613.

March 6, 2013
Tom Steinert-Threlkeld

Google, operator of the dominant set of data centers for indexing and searching for content on the World Wide Web, said it intends to submit a bid to build a consolidated audit trail of all stock and options quotes, orders and trade details for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Internet search giant will face off with a who’s who of the securities industry, including NYSE Technologies, the commercial arm of the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange; Nasdaq OMX Group, its chief rival in selling trading technology to exchanges around the world; and BATS Global Markets, an eight-year-old company that has used high-speed trading systems to take over about 10 percent of the nation’s trading in stocks on its two all-electronic national exchanges.

Industry Regulatory Authority, the regulator of brokers whose chief executive, Richard Ketchum, signaled in early 2010 an interest in creating and managing a database that would hold all the nation’s trading details for review by itself and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

FINRA, BATS, Nasdaq and NYSE Euronext all face potential conflicts of interest in submitting their bids. They all are part of the industry group charged by the SEC with formulating the overall plan to create the audit trail and pick the best bid to produce and manage the system.

“For many good reasons including technical and market expertise, the SEC tasked the exchanges to develop and manage the Consolidated Audit Trail process under its oversight and approval,’’ said Richard Adamonis, senior vice president of corporate communications at NYSE Euronext, owner of NYSE Technologies. “The proposal, like the entire process, is highly transparent and open for public comment.”

The potential conflicts are not likely to be show-stoppers, however. “If they end up going with a firm that is part of the working group, they will have to come out with clear criteria in terms of how they won the project,” said Sang Lee, managing partner of industry consultancy Aite Group. “I would say it is almost a disadvantage to be on the working group and also a bidder. At least, (such a bidder would) have a higher public perception hurdle to overcome.”

The audit trail plan is a response to the May 6, 2010, flash crash, which revealed how ill-equipped the nation’s regulators were to analyze market disruptions.

The staffs of the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission took five months to piece together details of what happened on that date to trigger a 600-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in a matter of minutes that afternoon; and, a similarly speedy bounceback.

Also announcing their intents to bid are a variety of the industry’s best-known technology suppliers, including SunGard Data Systems, Cinnober Financial Technology and Tradeworx, which is already creating a real-time database of trade details on public markets for the SEC; financial information service Thomson Reuters; consultancies that include Capgemini Financial Services, Grant Thornton, Wipro, Infosys, and Sapient; and the International Business Machines Corporation, the largest provider of information systems services.

Google to Face Off with FINRA, Exchanges in Audit Trail Bidding

Google, operator of the dominant set of data centers for indexing and searching for content on the World Wide Web, said it intends to submit a bid to build a consolidated audit trail of all stock and options quotes, orders and trade details for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

via Pocket http://www.securitiestechnologymonitor.com/news/google-to-face-off-with-finra-exchanges-in-audit-trail-bidding-31629-1.html?ET=securitiesindustry:e4229:190117a:&st=email&utm_source=editorial&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=STM_BNA_08302010_030613 March 06, 2013 at 09:04PM