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Communication between trader and portfolio manager is key to maximizing alpha for small caps. That's why at ING Investment Management the firm's entire small-cap team works to be on the same page and not miss opportunities.

Ed Knight, general counsel at Nasdaq OMX, testified before the Senate Banking Committee in December on the status of small capitalizations stocks. Knight argued the marketplace was overly fragmented and that exchanges needed government help in supporting the trading of small company stocks.

As regulators start to press their agendas for the coming year, Traders Magazine asked some industry experts what they expect to be the biggest regulatory and market structure issues of 2012. Here are their responses:

Here are recent hires and promotions in the equities trading world as Wall Street pros make that move, right now.

Chicago Board Options Exchange chairman and chief executive officer Bill Brodsky and president and chief operating officer Ed Tilly broke bread with the New York City press corps in January in order to update the scribes on the exchange operator's initiatives. Traders Magazine presents a slice of the Q&A session.

Here are recent hires and promotions in the equities trading world as Wall Street pros make that move, right now. Read about how Mizuho Securities USA added three sales traders, Fox River got a new managing director and Rosenblatt created a new position for a director of visual analytics.

Knight Capital Group is in the process of restructuring its institutional sales and trading division. Chief executive Tom Joyce told analysts and investors in late November that the firm is "rethinking and reconfiguring its offering" to money managers.

With every crisis comes opportunity. In the case of Drew Harbeck, a trader at the small-cap shop Cortina Asset Management, his opportunity came when he joined the Milwaukee-based firm's desk right before the market meltdown began, roughly three years ago.

Jamie Brigagliano, a former co-acting director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Securities and Exchange Commission, joined Sidley Austin as a partner in the firm's securities and futures regulatory practice.

Peter Driscoll, a senior trader with the Northern Trust Co. and a former chairman of the Security Traders Association, has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to reconsider its approval of a controversial New York Stock Exchange rule governing trading ahead, or front-running.

Here are recent hires and promotions in the equities and derivatives trading world, as Wall Street pros make that move, right now.

Matt Lavicka is a managing director at Goldman Sachs. He recently spoke out at the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association's annual market structure conference about the high costs to the industry of high-frequency traders flooding the market with quote data.

See who's been hired at Cowen and RBC Capital Markets, plus see who's expanded their office with two new hires, as well changes at ConvergEx.

Institutions are trading more options on indexes and exchange-traded funds than on single stocks, a reversal of practices just five years ago. That's the view of one agency broker who says the change reflects a desire on the part of money managers to hedge entire portfolios.

One outcome of the Occupy Wall Street protest could be additional regulation in the equities markets, according to Dan Mathisson , who heads electronic trading at Credit Suisse's AES group. Speaking before attendees at this year's national convention for the Security Traders Association, he said traders need to interact more with politicians to better educate them on how markets operate; otherwise the protestors' complaints about Wall Street would not be counterbalanced and could result in needless regulation.