We exhibited at the TradeTech Paris event last week – this is a mainly equities/trade execution event and as such most of the speakers were playing the waiting game and not saying much. Everyone seems to want to see more of the new trading venues come on line before they put out any opinions of substance.

The main (only?) news item was the rapid uptake of Chi-X and its share in trading volumes against the exchanges. There was some "competitive" banter between Peter Randall of Chi-X and Eli Lederman of Project Turquoise (Chi-X saying that Chi-X is a live business and not just a "project"). LSE was there too, not doing a great job of defending the record of exchanges – too much emphasis on defending their existance based on the past rather than the future in my opinion.