Unstructured Finance

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s press office has embarked on a bit of customer satisfaction research: The department is asking journalists to rate its performance during the hostage standoff in Alabama that ended last week.

It is a rare glint of cooperative spirit in the traditionally contentious relationship between journalists and public relations specialists.

A public affairs officer sent journalists an online survey asking them to say whether the information the FBI gave them during the early days of the standoff was “sufficient” – enough to do their jobs – or whether it was too little.

The survey also asked journalists to put their overall experience with the FBI’s press officers into categories such as “extremely helpful” or “not helpful at all.”

The FBI initially said the survey was not for publication, but then agreed to let Reuters write about it.

By late January last year, not even the London Whale himself thought the massive derivatives bets that eventually cost the bank $6.2 billion were such a good idea.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Bruno Iksil, the credit trader nicknamed ‘the London Whale’ for the outsized positions he took in the small market for the CDX Index, warned his bosses a year ago that the size of his desk’s positions had gotten “scary.”

JPMorgan admitted as much in the internal report it released to the public on Jan. 16, but kept Iksil’s name out of emails quoted in the report, supposedly to protect UK privacy laws. The Journal got confirmation that Iksil was indeed the author of the emails, and that he made a presentation expressing his worries to the bank’s chief investment officer, Ina Drew, on Feb. 3, 2012.

By Emily Flitter

REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

While the Securities and Exchange Commission maintains it does not need to do much to reign in the high frequency trading machines that have taken over Wall Street, a group of traders who understand how HFT firms make money—because it’s similar to the method they used to use themselves—have become vocal HFT critics. Yes, they may complain because they don’t make as much money as they used to, but they also think the machines are destabilizing the market.

Meet Dennis Dick, a prop trader in Detroit and a member of a league of stock market participants who have had to change their trading strategies now that they are no longer the fastest guns on the Street.

Dick is in the company of critics like Joe Saluzzi and Sal Arnuk, the co-founders of Themis Trading whose book, Broken Markets, details their concerns about the machines.