Brokerage

Bad trades, illquid assets and clearing industry woes have sunk Penson Financial Services. As a result, Penson has sold its clearing operations to PEAK6 Investments, which is forming a new entity, Apex Clearing, as a result of the acquisition.

With commissions in decline on the cash equities side of the business, Weeden & Co. has assembled a team of four options professionals in order to tap into what is often a distinct commission pool. In doing so, Weeden joins a growing list of small and mid-sized institutional brokers hiring options pros.

LavaFlow ECN is moving its primary data and trading systems to Equinix's NY4 co-location facility in Secaucus, N.J., from lower Manhattan.

Drive for five. That's Deutsche Bank's ambition for U.S. equities, to leapfrog into the highest echelon of brokers and be among the top five firms, according to Andre Crawford-Brunt, global head of equity trading at the firm.

Prop shops are on the rise. With the financial crisis receding into history and new regulations targeting banks, the industry is witnessing a rebound in the number of new proprietary trading firms. And this could just be the beginning.

The Germans have it. The British have it. The French have it. The Swiss, the Italians and the Japanese all have it. Now the Americans are going to get it. Next February, the U.S. stock market will start smoothing out the fluctuations in its stocks under a "limit up, limit down" regime. Throughout the day, exchanges will calculate upper and lower price limits for individual securities, and prevent trades from occurring outside those bands.

Cyborg Trading Systems has opened up its soup-to-nuts trading platform known as Cloud Trader to developers interested in building their own trading strategies, or algorithms, and running them through Cyborg's automation framework.

Many former prop traders who have started their own shops are having difficulty raising the critical mass of capital necessary to keep up with increased costs for running a firm today.

ITG on Tuesday announced the launch of a new router designed specifically for retail broker-dealers. The router had been in beta testing for about two months.

Raymond James is building out an electronic equity trading business and is rolling out new algorithms so clients have another means to pay for research. The firm has also added several new sales traders to its desk to further compliment its electronic tools.