Brokerage

AX Trading Network announced the launch of "DirectAX," an offering that allows investment banks working on behalf of issuing companies and private equity/venture capital firms to use the alternative trading system's call auction system to directly sell institutional investors blocks of stock.

Employees on stocks desks fell by 8.5 percent globally in the first nine months of last year, according Coalition Ltd., an industry analytics firm. That compares with a 6.6 percent drop in fixed-income workers and a 5.8 percent decrease for origination and advisory functions.

Yes, average daily volume on the main national exchanges fell 5.5 percent from November to December. But ... activity "only" fell 8.75 percent for the entire year, from December of 2011 to 2012.

B. Riley & Co. has added four sales traders from Caris & Company, a company it purchased last December. It has also incorporated the firm's large-cap research into its product offering.

In an interview with Traders Magazine, a senior TD Ameritrade official expressed dismay that the new Financial Transactions Tax being levied by France extends to trading in-the United States.

Buyside traders can now code their order tickets and algo instructions through the latest version of Newport, Instinet's execution management system. Traders can then send out a universal destination order ticket.

A large number of Nomura Securities traders and trading executives are landing on their feet, after the Japanese brokerage let 100 go in a shuttering of U.S. trading desks. About three dozen have moved to sister company Instinet; others have move moved to Cowen, Wells Fargo and Oppenheimer.

The cuts total about 6 percent of the New York-based company’s institutional securities group, which includes investment banking and trading units, and support staff, according to one person cited by Bloomberg News.

Goldmans Sachs' Multi-Strategy Investing group wagers about $1 billion of the New York-based firm’s own funds on the stocks and bonds of companies. The unit, headed by two 1999 Princeton University classmates, has no clients, the people said.

Buyside traders and fund managers are demanding their brokers shine some light on one of the enduring mysteries in the securities industry: Exactly what happens to an order once the send button is hit?