Yes, not everybody has visibility up the customer supply chain. But I was not asking Javelin to post which of his clients were doing what today, to spread his visibility around the Internet!


There is nothing proprietary, it is a well-known fact, that with smaller margins, many trading desks are attempting to funnel smaller tickets into the low-touch/automated channel, at the same time as preserving their analog relationships with these same clients for other quid-pro-quos and carpool exchanges.


But most trading information is price-implicit, and compressed into a single front-point along the time axis. And increased automation decreases time-axis visibility, and increases reliance on time-series deductions from the ticker, at the same time as making that information more symmetric across participants, as you pointed out.


So margins have been collapsing. Some in these forums have suggested that the way to stay out front is to push into more esoteric, higher-margin products, and away from Nasdaq dealering, cookie-cutter CP, et cetera. If you manufacture the product, if you build the deck, you own the information, and it creates a self-perpetuating liquidity magnet. In other words, if you synthesize the original deck out of other instruments, or you have unique pricing expertise... I won't go into that


So basically my question is what are they doing at Javelin's shop to maintain margins? And this is not "proprietary" information, rather it is promoted at financial-services conferences and sold to clients every day! How are they creating a positive flow-path for information, how are they maintaining the polarity of natural collection and dissemination barriers within the institution/client relationship, at the same time as taking advantage of automation efficiencies made possible with new technologies?


Put differently, how do you reduce friction for transactions, but maintain friction in information, to keep your competitors from leaning on your data then undercutting you, or pennying you? How do you stop your clients from spreading price-implicit spores of your "proprietary" data all over the Internet?


Or is this even a problem? I'd like some help trying to picture it


eLROY