Brokerage

The firm has hired a slew of new market makers and a new head of strategy and product development. The hires will help the wholesaler build a new over-the-counter desk, which will trade domestic and international equities, and fill out its listed securities desk.

The vast majority of market participants are expecting another volatile year in 2012. However, they also have an appetite for continued risk, according to a recent survey by Information Management Network.

BATS Global Markets has made its no-cost risk management tools available to all U.S. equities and option markets customers. Previously, they were available only to its sponsoring members.

A former block trading executive is hoping to replicate the action in the upstairs market electronically. Kevin Callahan, until 2009 a marketing official with upstairs shop JonesTrading, has formed Ax Trading to launch an electronic call auction.

Japan is actively devaluing its yen. Other nations threaten to retaliate, in kind, to stimulate their own economies through cheaper exports. A global currency war could wreak havoc on many smaller economies and stall out the budding recovery under way in larger ones ... or not.

With trading volumes down and margins razor-thin, brokers must adapt to the changing equities marketplace in order to remain profitable and survive. However, all is not doom and gloom, one analyst says, as brokers can employ a few strategies to help navigate the current equities market.

Overnight block trading has surged on Wall Street, reaching almost $60 billion in the last 12 months, nearly two and a half times the amount totaled in the year-earlier period of $24.3 billion, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Volumes for exchange-traded funds are down, and many people believe that declines in correlations at the beginning of this year could be the cause. According to a recent Credit Suisse report, ETFs made up only 16 percent of overall volume in the first quarter of 2012, down from 19 percent for all of 2011.

Here are this month's Editor's Picks for the best and most newsworthy stories covered by Traders Magazine online news. These stories appear in abbreviated form. To read full length items, please visit our wesbite at www.tradersmagazine.com.

Federal regulators are close to finishing "five or six" investigations that are based on emerging forms of false trading that use high-speed electronic access to markets.