XenoNews - July 2008 Newsletter
Spotlight on SIFMA
Thanks to everyone who visited us at SIFMA, New York, last month and especially to those who took the time to complete our short questionnaire on market data. Nearly 80% of respondents, all market data professionals, confirmed that data quality was an issue for their organisation. The survey revealed that more than 20% of respondents from Investment Banks, Asset Management companies and Hedge Funds spend up to 50% of their time validating data. Unsurprising perhaps as a Risk Management system is of little use if the data feeding it is dirty, but it raises concerns that so much time is being spent checking and validating data rather than on projects that deliver competitive advantage.
Special congratulations go to Joe Cantatori of Pali Capital who won an awesome 5 foot by 6 foot painting of Ali v Frazier, painted by Naj Alavi, the multi talented MD of Xenomorph, Inc., in a draw of people who completed the questionnaire.
Naj Alavi presenting the painting to Joe Cantatori of Pali Capital.
Larry Tabb's presentation on industry trends was informative. His predictions on an increased spend on risk management, brought about by firms wanting to understand why their models failed with regard to the sub prime situation and why they didn't foresee the huge losses, bodes well for Xenomorph. Read more: http://xenomorph.typepad.com.
Xenomorph Diary
We are delighted to be sponsoring the Intel Faster Risk and Analytics event in the autumn. Look out for more details in the next edition of XenoNews.
After a great event last year, Xenomorph is delighted to be taking a major sponsorship role at Risk Minds, which runs from 10th -12th December in Geneva. More information will follow shortly, but in the meantime why not check out the Risk Minds event web site.
News in Brief
Xenomorph was delighted to announce details of our latest US client at SIFMA. Four-Wire Capital is an alternative investment fund specializing in statistical-based investment strategies across all asset classes. Its founder, Peter Simon, recognized that his research was seriously hindered by the growth in data volumes which put manual spreadsheet analysis of data under increasing strain and open to error. The need for a flexible, reliable, high performance and easy-to-use data and analytics infrastructure soon became clear.
Peter's selection of Xenomorph TimeScape, which is used to capture data, clean it, validate it, store it and enable access and analysis, has reduced pre-trade analysis from eight hours to around 20 minutes. Read the full case study on the Xenomorph website.
Xenomorph Blog
Join the debate on industry trends, or feed Brian's love of restaurants by posting a comment on the Xenomorph blog: http://xenomorph.typepad.com.
Xenomorph in the News
Wilmott - SQL and Historic Data - Mixing Oil and Water?
"History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again."
Whether or not current market conditions lead you to endorse the above quote, history and its analysis is a vital building block within financial markets. Given the desire by regulators, risk managers and traders to store and analyse more and more historic data, it is perhaps also surprising that no standards have been established for the manipulation and analysis of historic time-ordered data. SQL and relational technology continue to dominate the database market, whilst a variety of specialist solutions deliver high performance but often require expensive knowledge of proprietary tools and techniques. Business users need ease of access and performance levels above those offered by standard relational database solutions, but technologists are extremely reluctant to head down the proprietary route. So what is the problem and what is to be done?
To read the article in full: http://www.xenomorph.com/news/inthepress/2008/may/wilmott
Inside Reference Data - Data Quality the Forgotten Risk
Brian Sentance, CEO Xenomorph, shares his views on poor data quality with Carla Mangado as she examines the impact of faulty data on risk calculations.
Xenomorph Software Ltd
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