Whether you’re expecting an audit or a lawsuit, it’s always good to have a paper trail. Enter Fortiva. This archive service offloads the entire process to a set of secure, hosted servers and offers the CIO or compliance officers an easy to navigate dashboard for picking out emails, even out of a massive database. The service is SEC 17a-4 compliant and fingerprints messages for authenticity, ensuring hackers don’t get in and change all your “buys” to “sells.”

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Lightstreamer provides a push engine for data distribution that sends information to any compatible browser. They have four products, seemingly named after Starbuck’s drink sizes (Moderato, Allegro, etc.) The heaviest package, Vivace, includes SDK for web client and .NET developm,ent along with unlimited concurrent users and thick or zero client support, depending on your in-house needs.

The software is free on a trial basis while pricing depends on the implementation (”One Moderato, please, my good man!”) and number of seats.

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Traders know a few things, but they apparently don’t know how to spell iPhone. Remember, folks: the iPhone isn’t out until June 29th, so I guess the winner gets a rain check.

I’ve spoken to short of a few gillion people since yesterday and the opinions on the impact of this move are varied. The question as it relates to the world of financial technology is whether this really matters? At first it’s easy to dismiss this move as a desperate act. Some of my colleagues correctly pointed out that no financial firm is going to invest resources into developing enhanced versions of the Java platform. OK, I conceed you that one, but this is sure to be of use to firms such as Azul systems an oppurtinity to contribute more in the space of high performance.

Now I would not suggest that such companies would push out their own lucrative technology into the public space, but I suspect that they are now in a place where they can contribute to changes in Java that would enhance the ability to offer such technology in the first place.

After dropping nearly 8 percent in 2005, IBM’s mainframe revenue is up 10 percent this year. That includes a 25 percent gain in the most recent quarter.

Mainframes were IBM’s fastest-growing hardware segment after the microchip division, which is enjoying a nice ride making microprocessors for the top three video game consoles.

IBM does not release precise figures, but analysts estimate mainframe revenue at roughly $2.3 billion in the first nine months of 2006. While that is a small chunk of IBM’s overall sales of $65 billion so far this year, mainframe revenue is especially precious because the machines drive huge software and maintenance deals, making them IBM’s most profitable line of hardware.

Uh oh, does this mean we should expect the trend to take over financial technology? I really hope not… What does the crystal ball say?

Of course, the huge third-quarter boost is unlikely to be sustained. IBM is benefiting from having released two new mainframes in the past year, and sales eventually should taper until an upgrade comes, at least a year from now.

Such ups and downs are typical: Unisys Corp., a much smaller vendor, has seen mainframe sales drop this year, but spokesman Brian Daly said the numbers strengthened in the third quarter with the release of a new model.

Oh boy that was a close one wasn’t it?

A total of 300 people working in Wall Street and the City were surveyed by Orchestria, a company which makes software to enforce employees to use network resources in accordance with company policy and international regulations.

The research discovered that more than 60 per cent of respondents in New York thought that it was right that their employer should monitor their email. By contrast, only 38 per cent in London supported their firm’s right to monitor email.

I don’t know what kind of training they do in London, but anyone who has ever worked on the sell side can probably attest to hours of online training applets on the issue of compliance. I suspect that despite how boring these lessons have been, one can hardly fail to be surprised that monitoring is going on in all forms.

That won’t stop some of us (not me of course) from trying to dodge such roadblocks:

However, New Yorkers are more likely to try to dodge email monitoring. Sixty per cent admitted that they had sent something that they ‘didn’t want their employer to know about’ using webmail.

This compared to 42 per cent of London respondents. Or maybe City workers are better liars when it comes to market surveys.

Are NY’ers better liars? I’ll leave that question for another day…

“This effort will produce cost savings and further increase efficiencies for both the floor firms and the exchange,” said Nelson Chai, the NYSE’s chief financial officer, in a written statement.

As the stock exchange moves to embrace electronic systems, analysts have long predicted the Big Board would scale back its floor operations, based on centuries-old auction-based work handled by brokers and specialists. The London Stock Exchange and many other major stock markets are fully automated.

As the article notes, they are actually somewhat late to the game, yet it still signals a the hardening trend of automation through technology.

Chai said that new technology used by floor brokers and specialists was, in part, responsible for the change. Those traders can handle increasing order volume with greater speed and efficiency, he said.

…

Some analysts said the NYSE would eventually abandon specialists and floor brokers and move to a wholly electronic system. Jerry Putnam, the Big Board’s chief technology officer, said last week “we made a decision not to decide” about the future of the trading floor.

And it won’t be long now until everything is automated. Just think, that image we all have of a bustling Wall St. exchange floor will soon be nothing but a memory of simpler times.

At a black-tie event this summer, some of the world’s most powerful bankers and business executives gathered for a toast: “We are the international finance and business capital of the world, the world’s greatest global financial center, without question,” the mayor told the assembled crowd.

But that was not Michael R. Bloomberg talking. The city was not New York — it was London.

Even as the Dow Jones industrial average reaches new highs and Wall Street companies report robust profits, by some measures New York’s long-held crown as the financial capital of the world may be slipping.

I would say it’s definitely slipping.

“There’s a genuine recognition that we need to make some changes,” said Laure Aubuchon, head of international business development for the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Winning financial business is “so important to New York City,” she said. The financial services industry makes up 9 percent of the city’s work force and provides 31 percent of the tax base, she said.

That’s great that there’s a recognition, a genuine one even, but what exactly will be done about it? The article doesn’t suggest much in the actualy way of change, but does lay out evidence for the claim. Worth reading.

The cash register’s “ka-ching” is nearly extinct. The “beep” of the automated teller machine may soon follow. Even the silent swipe of a card with a magnetic strip is destined to disappear.

In their place, you’ll wave a plastic card or a key chain fob over a receiver to complete a “contactless” purchase. You’ll deposit checks and cash without using an envelope and walk away with a more detailed receipt and nearly immediate access to those funds.

I spent only a little time developing technology for retail banking and it was a while ago. Let’s just say it wasn’t nearly as interesting as this stuff. If however you’re looking for something cool to work on these days, quite a few of these banks are moving in this direction…

Big banks like Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, and Wells Fargo are running pilot programs in major metropolitan areas like New York, Washington, Atlanta and San Francisco. Even though contactless cards are still officially in testing phase, users already number in the millions.

…so get hopping!

“Technology took a lot of the margin out of the business,” said Richard duBusc, a Credit Suisse banker who started working on Wall Street 40 years ago when the NYSE closed on Wednesday afternoons to catch up on its paperwork. “Is that good or bad? It’s bad if you’re losing your job. It’s good if you’re paying a tighter bid-ask spread.”

But is it technology or deregulation aided by technology that has caused this to happen? It seems that the financial gains in bond trading had less to do with lack of inherint technology and more to do with secrecy. I guess you can argue that technology enabled the federal government to insist upon a more transparent system that would have been more difficult to provide in previous generations.

he U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began to break down the secrecy of the market in 1992 because of concern high-yield, high-risk bonds were being sold based on inside information about future takeovers. Former SEC chairman Richard Breeden’s probe into junk bond trading led to the creation of the Fixed Income Pricing Service.

Arthur Levitt, president Bill Clinton’s choice to succeed Mr. Breeden at the SEC, wanted a database to collect the prices of trades on all registered corporate bonds. That system, now operated by NASD, posts prices 15 minutes after trades occur.

The system, called the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine, is known by its acronym, Trace.

I remember attending a lecture two years ago by an ex-bond trader turned corporate finance trainer at a major global investment bank. He said at the time that if you are a bonds trader and aren’t willing to change with the times and learn to trade other instruments that you’ll be out of a job. Technology and trading can blur the lines at times, but clearly trading requires an edge and a much different mind than a pure technologist, so I can’t really judge what it would be like. I can see years in advance when a language like C++ is destined to become niche and easily prepare for a transition. Financial markets are different beasts however:

One-quarter of all corporate bond traders, analysts, brokers and salesmen have lost their jobs in the past two years, according to Michael Karp, head of Options Group, a New York-based executive search and consulting firm.

One of Mr. Seifer’s former employees, Bill Fecci, who turned in his carpenter’s union card 10 years ago to become a corporate bond salesman, is back to hanging sheetrock on weekends to make ends meet.

The 40-year-old broker at Seidel & Shaw LLC in New York says his job on Wall Street will be eliminated by the end of the year.

“The future of this business is bleak,” Mr. Fecci said in an e-mail from a building site in Staten Island, N.Y. “Your opponent basically knows your cards and you basically know his. You don’t win very much, nor does he lose very much, and the exchange goes on without a net winner.”

I still suspect that technology will create more trading opportunities in the end than it will destroy, but it will always be a hard thing to truly measure.