Tag Archives: david beth

2015 Buy Side Trader Resolutions:Be More Targeted When Using Sell-Side Executioners; These Experts Would Know

January 2, 2015 MarketsMuse Staff Reporter Leave a comment

MarketsMuse update courtesy of extracts from 31 December story in industry mag Markets Media.com

The buy side is becoming more targeted with sell-side firms, employing a rifle rather than a shotgun approach as liquidity continues to shrink. A big factor behind this newfound independence has been the lessening of liquidity in 2014 in derivatives and fixed income markets, which has forced buy-side institutions to be more resourceful in sourcing liquidity

“The buy-side is more empowered and understandably, taking greater ownership of their execution and process,” Jennica Ross, managing director at execution firm WallachBeth Capital, told Markets Media. “Within those segments they are obviously narrowing the relationships that they have. They don’t need to have the plethora and the sheer numbers of external sell-side relationships that they had before, and the relationships they do have are now much more consultative.”

“The most surprising thing was how many market making firms basically closed up,” said Dave Beth, president and chief operating officer at WallachBeth. “The lessening of liquidity throughout the whole derivative landscape, both listed and the OTC, we see happening at a broad stroke. Clients should expect [spreads] in derivative markets to widen a little bit. I think it has a lot to do with regulation and with balance sheet usage in the bigger institutions.”

In WallachBeth’s ETF market making business, liquidity remains at high levels. “As far as the ETF cash business, one could say the liquidity is as great as ever and it continues to grow,” Beth said. “Whereas in the listed and OTC options space, there’s been an express decrease in immediately actionable liquidity. I think that it’s affected us no different than any other player. I think clients also recognize that the playing field is changing, and that it’s okay to pay a little bit of a wider spread to get their business done.”

WallachBeth continues to diversify its business in order to take up the slack left by the exit of larger sell-side institutions.

“While there’s been contraction of liquidity within the derivatives space, we’ve seen an increased opportunity from more clients who are getting involved in our other business units, whether that be equity, program trading or fixed income trading,” said Ross.

For the full story from Markets Media, please click here.

ETF News, People Profiles, Tech Talk

Talking Trading Technology: This BrokerDealer Has Buyside Clients’ Back

December 11, 2014 MarketsMuse Staff Reporter Leave a comment

Below extract courtesy of 08 Dec edition of MarketsMedia.com; reporting by Steve Marlin

Agency Broker WallachBeth Raises Tech Bar

WallachBeth Capital, a provider of institutional execution for buy-side investment managers, recently appointed quantitative trading veteran Matthew Rowley to the newly created role of chief technology officer, signaling the firm’s commitment to delivering customized services that address specific and often complex order-execution and related business-process needs.

The company’s founders, Michael Wallach and David Beth, “have a vision of the industry becoming even more technologically driven,” Rowley told Markets Media.

Rowley joined WallachBeth from Crédit Agricole Cheuvreux, where he was credited with helping the firm attain a leadership position in the global electronic brokerage space. more

ETF News, People Profiles, Tech Talk

Agency BrokerDealer Enhances Offering for ETF Multi-Basket Trading

August 6, 2014 MarketsMuse Staff Reporter Leave a comment

Below courtesy of Aug 6 edition of Wall Street Letter, article written by staff reporter Sean Creamer

WallachBeth to enhance multi-basket trading

WallachBeth Capital, a New York City-based agency brokerage, will enhance its existing portfolio and multi-basket trading in exchange-traded funds and other equities to make greater use of OMEX Systems, according to executive members of both companies.

The firm currently uses OMEX for trading in equities, including ETFs, and options, as well as critical middle and back office functionality but it will take on additional functionality from the vendor in order to propel the firm even further into multi-basket trading, according to Michael Wallach, CEO.

“What we are doing with OMEX is attempting to customize the trading technology so that we can have enhanced pre-and post-trade abilities and analytics for multiple basket orders and portfolio management,” said Wallach.

David Beth, President, WallachBeth Capital

David Beth, President and Chief Operating Officer at WallachBeth, noted that add-ons would bolster the current system used for trading baskets.

“We are looking for state of the art analytics, coupled and bolted to the [execution management system] for pre- and post-trade analytics, as well as including the ability for traders to quickly be able to change strategies or algos during and after executing an order,” said Beth.

In preparation for this change, last month the firm hired Matthew Rowley as its chief technology officer, a veteran of Crédit Agricole and Fidessa, who will oversee the firm’s technology push and to enhance existing applications.

Wallach noted that adding this functionality won’t be burdensome, but will involve a re-routing of some client network connections.

For the full coverage, please visit the Wall Street Letter website (subscription required, but FREE TRIAL is available)

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ETF News, Global Macro Strategy

ETF Adoption Continues at Brisk Pace

April 14, 2014 MarketsMuse Staff Reporter Leave a comment

Excerpt courtesy of MarketsMedia

Providers of ETFs and mutual funds are using targeted marketing approaches to match the right products with the right customers.

With ETFs use climbing among active investors, both retail and institutional, packagers of ETFs view the product as a low-cost vehicle for investors to access alternative strategies such as those employed by hedge funds, many of which act as sub-advisers for the ETFs.

ETF use among registered investment advisors (RIAs) has grown nearly 27% annually over the past 5 years, according to research firm Cerulli Associates anticipates this growth to continue.

“The allocation to ETFs among RIAs grew 48% from 2011 to 2012,” said Kenton Shirk, associate director at Cerulli. “The RIA channel is an extremely attractive opportunity for asset managers.”

ETFs gained popularity as a cost-effective method to achieve diversification, but with increased adoption they have evolved to cover a wide variety of investment strategies.

“ETFs provide an easy way for managers to offer out products to alternative investors,” said David Beth, president and chief operating officer at WallachBeth Capital. “The ETF wrapper is very easy and transparent.”

davidbethmm — David Beth, President / COO WallachBeth Capital

Fund manager Direxion offers leveraged and inverse ETFs for active traders looking to execute short-term trading strategies.

“We consider ourselves a provider of alternative investment strategies,” said Andy O’Rourke, Direxion’s chief marketing officer. “We also have a few strategy-based non-leveraged ETFs that they have rules-based indexes, such as KNOW, which is an ETF that tracks the buying activity of corporate insiders on the secondary market.”

Direxion recently unveil a marketing campaign designed to inform experienced active traders about the potential benefits of the firm’s 3X leveraged ETFs. A departure from simply highlighting the flexibility of trading in either direction, the marketing campaign’s 60-second television commercial invites active traders to join “The Fellowship of the Bold.” Continue reading →

ETF News, People Profiles, Strike Price

ETF and Options Execution Firm Expands Global Footprint: More Hiring In Store

November 30, 2013 MarketsMuse Staff Reporter Leave a comment

Courtesy of Wall Street Letter reporter Sean Creamer

Institutional brokerage WallachBeth Capital LLC will expand its staff to bolster electronic trading across exchange-traded funds and options over the next two years, according to Michael Wallach, CEO.

The agency broker-dealer aims to bring on 15-20 people, some of whom may be college interns who transition to permanent employment with the company, according to Wallach. He added “this strategy ensures the staff has a rounded experience in the firm before taking up a permanent role.”

WB CEO Michael Wallach (r), Pres/COO David Beth (l)

Beyond staff expansion, the brokerage, whose headquarters is based in the heart of Wall Street and maintains a footprint in the UK, is aiming to expand its ETF execution presence to South America to serve pension fund managers in these regions, Wallach noted. “ Many money managers throughout the world now trade US ETFs. We want to introduce our model to any region whose managers want and need real best execution services.” To view the full article from WSL, please click here.

ETF News, Strike Price

UofMass Study: Option Collar Strategies Deliver Better Performance With Less Risk

May 4, 2012 MarketsMuse Staff Reporter Leave a comment

As reported by Pension&Investments Magazine, a newly-published research report from the University of Massachussetts has found options-based collar strategies would have outperformed the market in most asset classes, while providing drastically reduced risk leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, AND as well, throughout the subsequent recovery.

“The contagion across asset classes during the financial crisis suggests that protective options-based investment strategies, such as collars, when implemented on a wide range of asset classes, could provide portfolios with greater downside risk protection than standard multi-asset diversification programs,” according to a summary release of the report issued by the Options Industry Council, which helped sponsor the research by Edward Szado and Thomas Schneewies. Mr. Szado is a research analyst and Mr. Schneewies a professor of finance, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts.

The research covers the 55 months from June 2007 to Dec. 31, 2011, and expands on a 2010 paper that studied the effects of a collar strategy against the PowerShares QQQ ETF from 1999 to 2010.

The authors evaluated the impact of collar strategies against ETFs across a wide range of asset classes such as equities, commodity, fixed income, currency and real estate, based on a set of rules where a six-month put option is purchased and consecutive one-month calls are written. While Australian dollar and Japanese yen currency ETFs, two bond ETFs and Nasdaq and gold ETFs outperformed the collars, the strategy outperformed other ETFs across asset classes while providing significant risk protection. Continue reading →

ETF News, Global Macro Strategy, People Profiles

Amsterdam Hosting 3rd Annual InsideETFs Europe

February 22, 2012 MarketsMuse Staff Reporter Leave a comment

Where’s a better place than Amsterdam for an International ETF conference in the month of May? Our global concierge says, “No place compares to Amsterdam, for a variety of reasons!”

Which is exactly why IndexUniverse, the largest ETF conference producer, is once again hosting its “Annual InsideETFsEurope” for the third year in one of the most entertaining cities in all of Europe.

US-based ETF market players who have attended InsideETFsEurope in prior years will confirm this program is a “great do” for those that want to refresh relationships and make new acquaintances with the growing number of European fund managers that are building out their ETF portfolios.

Observed upcoming attendee David Beth, President of NYC-based WallachBeth Capital, one of the “go-to” firms for those seeking ETF best execution in US ETF products, “Having recently formed an alliance with London’s NSBO to replicate our best execution model for Europe, this conference will provide a great opportunity for portfolio managers and head traders to better understand what we do, and how we do it with respect to capturing better price executions than they might ordinarily be accustomed to.”

Cheers to all..click on the conference logo to register and don’t forget to make your dinner reservations well in advance!