Dark Pools Research Articles

Liquidity Aggregation

The pursuit of anonymous market liquidity despite significant fragmentation has bedeviled the buyside trading community since the advent of decimalization. Brokers have also become more selective in how they commit capital, posing an additional challenge for executing block trades on a timely and cost-efficient basis. The author, a Director of Sales and Trading at Investment Technology Group, Inc. (ITG), explores the use of dark pools of liquidity, such as ATSs (Alternative Trading Systems), to bring buyers and sellers of block sizes together. He also explains the steep downside to ATSs: increased fragmentation, which can require additional time, money and resources to track down hidden pockets of liquidity, as well as greater cost of execution. The author portrays the current state of liquidity fragmentation, examining the direct and indirect costs for traders. He then objectively explores ATS Aggregators as one solution, looking at both the positives and the pitfalls, as well as recommendations for avoiding these negative scenarios in the future. <b>TOPICS:</b>Exchanges/markets/clearinghouses, accounting and ratio analysis, statistical methods

Competition and Fragmentation in the Equity Markets: The Effect of Regulation Nms

The 1974 Amendments to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 set forth the goal of establishing a National Market System (NMS) in which all equity trades would be integrated into a common computerized trading system. The paper argues that such a system cannot serve the needs of all investors—large or small, informed or uninformed. The recently approved Regulation NMS is an attempt to impose such a common trading system onto the equity market. Large institutions with their resources will find ways to evade it and are already fragmenting the market with dark pools of liquidity. This Regulation will certainly result in unintended consequences, to the detriment of the US equity market.

Sodium fluoride induced metabolic changes in jack pine seedlings. I. Effect on gas exchange, water content, and carbohydrates

Dark respiration, photosynthesis, water content, and carbohydrate pools were examined in jack pine (Pinusbanksiana Lamb.) seedlings treated for 1–7 days with sodium fluoride. Compared with those of controls, both respiratory rates and respiratory quotient decreased in plants treated for 1 day. Photosynthetic rates declined in plants exposed to fluoride for 1, 2, and 4 days. Recovery was observed in seedlings treated for 7 days. A decrease in water content was noted as early as 1 day after the exposure of plants to fluoride, and seedlings treated for longer periods continued to contain less water than control plants. The following effects of sodium fluoride treatment on carbohydrates were observed. Firstly, inositol increased in plants after 1 day, glucose increased after 1 and 2 days, and starch significantly declined in plants treated for 1 day. Sucrose was also initially present in lower amounts in fluoride-treated seedlings. Plants treated for 7 days contained levels of sucrose similar to those of controls. The possibility that water stress may be partly responsible for some of the metabolic changes is discussed.

In This Dark Pool, Our Marriage Bed

In This Dark Pool, Our Marriage Bed

Observation et analyse de la prédation des œufs d'Ambystoma maculatum (Shaw) (Amphibia, Urodela) par des larves de Diptères chironomidés, dans la région de Trois-Rivières (Québec)

Observations during spring 1980 in two temporary pools near Trois-Rivières, Quebec, and in the laboratory show that Dipterian chironomid larvae can go through the gelatinous envelopes of egg masses of the salamander Ambystoma maculatum and consume developing eggs and embryos. In the clear water pool, egg spawns are heavily infested by the chironomid Parachironomus cf. forceps and embryonic mortality reaches 70 to 100%. In the dark water pool, infestation by an unidentified chironomid is low and embryonic mortality reaches 8%. In both cases, chironomid larvae leave the egg masses some 9 days before hatching of the salamanders. Fortuitous exploitation of a readily available resource is hypothesized; the frequency and precision of the observed phenological coincidence, due to the presence of other syntopic amphibian spring breeders, will be examined further.

Equal to Life: Tove Jansson's Moomintrolls

EQUAL TO LIFE: TOVE JANSSON' S MOOMINTROLLS Nancy Lyman Huse Tove Jansson's moomintrolls, often described as "unusual" or "wholly imaginative," provide an interesting problem for the literary critic accustomed to discussing the way authors work within a tradition. As fantasies, the Moomin books resist description as quest-narratives, domestic tales, or beast fables. While humorous "trolls" constitute a tradition in Scandinavian storytelling, notably in the brilliant comedy of Topelius and the appealing illustrations of John Bauer, Jansson must be savored as an artist whose unique private experience is the true source of her universally significant fantasy world. Moominland is not a world which reflects a higher one, nor is it a country which satirizes our own. Instead, the books celebrate the reality a child knows, with its alternating terror and joy. Her autobiography , Sculptor' s Daughter , and another of her books for adults, The Summer Book, help to explain the sources of Jansson's comforting yet strikingly modern world view, a view which emerges somewhat randomly in the early Moomin tales and with a powerful consistency in the later ones. The stories depend on continual movement between the core of physical security best represented by Moominmamma ' s commodious handbag and the metaphysical risk involved in experiencing and even becoming one with cosmic phenomena like the sea, the seasons, and the sky. "Self-definition in a benevolent universe" is a possible description of Jansson's major theme, yet it fails to include the loving tension between individual and community essential to her version of self-definition, as well as the cataclysmic proportions of the floods, the storms, the alternately barren or lush topography , and the dark pools and hidden glades the creatures love and fear. The Moomin family, equal to life, actually savors catastrophe; they can do this because no principle of pure evil is at work in their world. The trolls and their companions are part of the tides, storms, and sunshine; the essence of life is experience, the unfolding experience of a child who knows the incredible terror of separation, yet knows even more fully the comfort and safety of a parent's presence and thus is eager for the adventure that brings the inevitable separation. In her experience as the daughter of artists and island-dwellers, Jansson has found a rich metaphor of childhood which is neither saccharine nor didactic. Moominmamma is the core of security in Moominland. She is the pivotal character whose meaning and presence make Jansson's work both distinctly personal and universal and who enables the artist to defy our usual expectations that serious literature is in some way about our need to improve. Although, in the later Moomin books at least, some of the creatures do change, Jansson sets up no imperative for change. The creature has a place and will be loved — regardless of its decision to change or not. Moominmamma does not view others as flawed. As nearly as I have seen it done, Jansson captures in art the notion of "mother" as it exists for the very young, loved child. Recalling her childhood impression of growing up in a "tremendously rich and problem-free home," the writer comments that she was unaware of the economic difficulties of her artist parents, as well as other problems they faced. "... anything was possible, everything was exciting .... My mother, especially , had an unusual capacity for mixing stern morality with an almost exhilarating tolerance, a quality I have never met with in anyone else." In the fantasy world, Moominmamma does provide essential values and norms, but she will not exclude those who do not meet them. Existence gives one an intrinsic right to Moominmamma ' s love. One of Jansson's best stories, "The Invisible Child," in Tales from Moominvalley, is a clear example of the troll mama's central role in the books. Ninny; like other creatures who are a part of the extended family whose nucleus is the Mamma, Pappa, and young Moomintroll; is the "invisible child" who has faded away because she was "frightened the wrong way by a lady who had taken care of her without really liking her," the "icily ironical kind" who ridiculed instead of scolded. Mama declines to...